REMINISCENCES 



THOMAS CARLYLE 



MAR 15 J9, 



/ 



REMINISCENCES 



BY 

THOMAS CARLYLE 



EDITED BY 

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

743 AND 745 Broadway 
1881 



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30 



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Authorized Edition. 



All rights reserved. 



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PREFACE. 



In the summer of 1871 Mr. Carlyle placed in my hands 
a collection of MSS. of which he desired me to take 
charge, and to pubHsh, should I think fit to do so, after 
he was gone. They consisted of letters written by his 
wife to himself and to other friends during the period of 
her married life, with the ''rudiments" of a preface of his 
own, giving an account of her family, her childhood, and 
their own experience together from their first acquaint- 
ance till her death. They were married in 1826; Mrs. 
Carlyle died suddenly in 1866. Between these two 
periods Carlyle's active literary life was comprised ; and 
he thought it unnecessary that more than these letters 
contained should be made known, or attempted to be 
made known, about himself or his personal history. The 
essential part of his life was in his works, which those who 
chose could read. The private part of it was a matter in 
which the world had no concern. Enough would be 
found, told by one who knew him better than any one 



VI PREFACE. 

else knew him, to satisfy such curiosity as there might 
be. His object was rather to leave a monument to a 
singularly gifted woman, who, had she so pleased, might 
have made a name for herself, and for his sake had volun- 
tarily sacrificed ambition and fortune. 

The letters had been partially prepared for the press 
by short separate introductions and explanatory notes. 
But Carlyle warned me that before they were published 
they would require anxious revision. Written with the 
unreserve of confidential communications, they contained 
anecdotes, allusions, reflections, expressions of opinion 
and feeling, which were intended obviously for no eye 
save that of the person to whom they were addressed. 
He believed at the time I speak of, that his own life was 
near its end, and seeing the difficulty in which I might be 
placed, he left me at last with discretion to destroy the 
whole of them, should I find the task of discriminating 
too intricate a problem. 

The expectation of an early end was perhaps suggested 
by the wish for it. He could no longer write. His hand 
was disabled by palsy. His temperament did not suit 
with dictation, and he was impatient of an existence which 
he could no longer turn to any useful purpose. He lin- 
gered on, however, year after year, and it gradually be- 
came known to him that his wishes would not protect him 
from biographers, and that an account of his life would 



PREFACE. vii 

certainly be tried, perhaps by more than one person. A 
true description of it he did not beheve that any one 
could give, not even his closest friend ; but there might 
be degrees of falsity ; and since a biography of some kind 
there was to be, he decided at last to extend his original 
commission to me, and to make over to me all his private 
papers, journals, notebooks, letters, and unfinished or 
neglected writings. 

Being a person of most methodical habits, he had 
preserved every letter which he had ever received of not 
entirely trifling import. His mother, his wife, his broth- 
ers, and many of his friends had kept as carefully every 
letter from himself. The most remarkable of his contem- 
poraries had been among his correspondents — English, 
French, Italian, German, and American. Goethe had 
recognised his genius, and had written to him often, 
advising and encouraging. His own and Mrs. Carlyle's 
journals were records of their most secret thoughts. All 
these Mr. Carlyle, scarcely remembering what they con- 
tained, but with characteristic fearlessness, gave me leave 
to use as I might please. 

I Material of such a character makes my duty in one 
respect an easy one. I have not to relate Mr. Carlyle's 
history, or describe his character. He is his own biog- 
rapher, and paints his own portrait. But another diffi- 
culty arises from the extent of the resources thrown open 



n 
u 



viii PREFACE. 

to me. His own letters are as full of matter as the richest 
of his published works. His friends were not common 
m*en, and in writing to him they wrote their best. Of 
the many thousand letters in my possession, there is hardly 
one which either on its special merits or through its con- 
nection with something which concerned him, does not 
deserve to be printed. Selection is indispensable ; a 
middle way must be struck between too much and too 
little. I have been guided largely, however, by Carlyle's 
personal directions to me, and such a way will, I trust, be 
discovered. 

Meanwhile, on examining the miscellaneous MSS. I 
found among them various sketches and reminiscences, 
one written in a notebook fifty years ago on hearing in 
London of his father's death ; another of Edward Irving ; 
another of Lord Jeffrey ; others (these brief and slight), of 
Southey and Wordsworth. In addition there was a long 
narrative, or fragments of a narrative, designed as material 
for the introduction to Mrs. Carlyle's letters. These letters 
would now have to be rearranged with his own ; and an 
introduction, under the shape which had been intended for 
it, would be no longer necessary. The '* Reminiscences " 
appeared to me to be far too valuable to be broken up and 
employed in any composition of my own, and I told Mr. 
Carlyle that I thought they ought to be printed with the 
requisite omissions immediately after his own death. He 



PREFACE. IX 

agreed with me that it should be so, and at one time it 
was proposed that the type should be set up while he was 
still alive, and could himself revise what he had written. 
He found, however, that the effort would be too much for 
him, and the reader has here before him Mr. Carlyle's own 
handiwork, but without his last touches, not edited by 
himself, not corrected by himself, perhaps most of it not 
intended for publication, and written down merely as an 
occupation, for his own private satisfaction. 

The Introductory Fragments were written immedi- 
ately after his wife's death ; the account of Irving belongs 
to the autumn and winter which followed. So singular 
was his condition at this time, that he was afterwards un- 
conscious what he had done ; and when ten years later I 
found the Irving MS. and asked him about it, he did not 
know to what I was alluding. The sketch of Jeffrey was 
written immediately after. Some parts of the introduc- 
tion I have reserved for the biography, into which they 
will most conveniently fall ; the rest, from the point where 
they form a consecutive story, I have printed with only 
a few occasional reservations. ** Southey " and " Words- 
worth," being merely detached notes of a few personal 
recollections, I have attached as an appendix. 

Nothing -more remains to be said about these papers, 
save to repeat, for clearness sake, that they are pubhshed 
with Mr. Carlyle's consent but without his supervision. 



X PREFACE. 

The detailed responsibility is therefore entirely my own. 
I will add for the convenience of the general public, the 
few chief points of his outward life. He was the son of 
a village mason, born at Ecclefechan in Annandale, 
December 4, 1795. He was educated first at Eccle- 
fechan school. In 1806 he was sent to the Grammar 
School at Annan, and in 1809 to Edinburgh University. 
In 1814 he was appointed mathematiqal usher at Annan, 
and in 18 16 schoolmaster at Kirkcaldy. In 181 8 he gave 
up his situation, and supported himself by taking pupils 
at Edinburgh. In 1822 he became private tutor in the 
family of Mr. Charles Buller, Charles Buller the younger, 
who was afterwards so brilliantly distinguished in Par- 
liament, being his pupil. While in this capacity he wrote 
his " Life of Schiller," and translated " Wilhelm Meister." 
In 1826 he married. He lived for eighteen months at 
Comley Bank, on the north side of Edinburgh. He then 
removed to Craigenputtoch, a moorland farm in Dum- 
friesshire belonging to his wife's mother, where he re- 
mained for seven years, writing '' Sartor Resartus " there, 
and nearly all his Miscellanies. In 1834 he left Scotland 
and settled in London, 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea ; and 
there continued without further change till his death. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

JAMES CARLYLE OF ECCLEFECHAN, . . . . i 

EDWARD IRVING, 53 

LORD JEFFREY, 269 

JANE WELSH CARLYLE, 323 

APPENDIX :—SOUTHEY ; WORDSWORTH, . . . .511 



ERRATUM. 

Page 184, third line from bottom, for ^^ La ca dame la manOy^ 
read ** La ci darem la manoJ'* 



REMINISCENCES. 



JAMES CARLYLE, OF ECCLEFECHAN, 
MASON. 



JAMES CARLYLE. 

On Tuesday, Jan. 26, 1832, I received tidings that my 
dear and worthy father had departed out of this world. 
He was called away by a death apparently of the mildest, 
on Sunday morning about six. He had taken what was 
thought a bad cold on the Monday preceding, but rose 
every day and was sometimes out of doors. Occasionally 
he was insensible (as pain usually soon made him of late 
years), but when spoken to he recollected himself. He 
was up and at the kitchen fire (at Scotsbrig^, on the 
Saturday evening about six, but w^as evidently growing 
fast worse in breathing. " About ten o'clock he fell into 
a sort of stupor," writes my sister Jane, *' still breathing 
higher and with greater difficulty. He spoke little to any 
of us, seemingly unconscious of what he did, came over 
the bedside, and oftered up a prayer to Heaven in such 
accents as it is impossible to forget. " He departed 
almost without a struggle," adds she, "this morning at 
half-past six." My mother adds, in her own hand, ** It 
is God that has done it. Be still, my dear children. 

* Written in London in January 1832. 

' A farm near Ecclefechan occupied by James Carlyle during the last six 
years of his life. 



4 JAMES CARLYLE. 

Your affectionate mother. God support us all." The 
funeral is to be on Friday, the present date is Wednesday 
night. This stroke, altogether unexpected at the time, 
but which I have been long anticipating in general, falls 
heavy on me, as such needs must, yet not so as to stun 
me or unman me. Natural tears have come to my relief. 
I can look at my dear father, and that section of the past 
which he has made alive for me, in a certain sacred sanc- 
tified light, and give way to what thoughts rise in me 
without feeling that they are weak and useless. 
' The time till the funeral was past I instantly deter- 
mined on passing with my wife only, and all others were 
excluded. I have written to my mother and to John,' 
have walked far and much, chiefly in the Regent's Park, 
and considered about many things, if so were that I might 
accomplish this problem, to see clearly what my present 
calamity means — what I have lost and what lesson my 
loss was to teach me. 

As for the departed we ought to say that he was taken 
home '' like a shock of corn fully ripe." He '' had finished 
the work that was given him to do " and finished it (very 
greatly more than the most) as became a man. He was 
summoned too before he had ceased to be interesting — to 
be loveable. (He was to the last the pleasantest man I 
had to speak with in Scotland.) For many years too he 
had the end ever in his eye, and was studying to make 
all preparation for what in his strong way he called often 
'* that last, that awful change." Even at every new part- 
ing of late years I have noticed him wring my hand with 

^ Mr. Carlyle's brother. 



JAMES CARLYLE. 5 

a tenderer pressure, as if he felt that one other of our few 
meetings here was over. Mercifully also has he been 
spared me till I am abler to bear his loss ; till by mani- 
fold struggles I too, as he did, feel my feet on the Ever- 
lasting rock, and through time with its death, can in some 
degree see into eternity with its life. So that I have 
repeated, not with unwet eyes, let me hope likewise not 
with unsoftened heart, those old and for ever true words, 
** Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord ; they do rest 
from their labours, and their works follow them." Yes, 
their works follow them. The force that had been lent 
my father he honourably expended in manful welldoing. 
A portion of this planet bears beneficent traces of his 
strong hand and strong head. Nothing that he under- 
took to do but he did it faithfully and like a true man. I 
shall look on the houses he built with a certain proud 
interest. They stand firm and sound to the heart all over 
his little district. No one that comes after him will ever 
say, ** Here was the finger of a hollow eye-servant." 
They are little texts for me of the gospel of man's free 
will. Nor will his deeds and sayings in any case be found 
unworthy — not false and barren, but genuine and fit. 
Nay, am not I also the humble James Carlyle's work ? I 
owe him much more than existence, I owe him a noble 
inspiring example (now that I can read it in that rustic 
character). It was he exclusively that determined on 
educating me ; that from his small hard-earned funds sent 
me to school and college, and made me whatever I am or 
may become. Let me not mourn for my father, let me 
do worthily of him. So shall he still Hve even here in 



6 JAMES CARLYLE. 

me, and his worth plant itself honourably forth into new 
generations. 

I purpose now, while the impression is more pure and 
clear within me, to mark down the main things I can 
recollect of my father. To myself, if I live to after years, 
it may be instructive and interesting, as the past grows 
ever holier the farther we leave it. My mind is calm 
enough to do it deliberately, and to do it truly. The 
thought of that pale earnest face which even now lies 
stiffened into death in that bed at Scotsbrig, with the In- 
finite all of worlds looking down on it, will certainly 
impel me. Neither, should these lines survive myself 
and be seen by others, can the sight of them do harm to 
anyone. It is good to know how a true spirit will vindi- 
cate itself with truth and freedom through what obstruc- 
tions soever ; how the acorn cast carelessly into the 
wilderness will make room for itself and grow to be an 
oak. This is one of the cases belonging to that class, 
" the hves of remarkable men," in which it has been said, 
** paper and ink should least of all be spared." I call a 
man remarkable who becomes a true workman in this 
vineyard of the Highest. Be his work that of palace 
building and kingdom founding, or only of delving and 
ditching, to me it is no matter, or next to none. All 
human work is transitory, small in itself, contemptible. 
Only the worker thereof and the spirit that dwelt in him 
is significant. I proceed without order, or almost any 
forethought, anxious only to save what I have left and 
mark it as it lies in me. 



JAMES CARLYLE. 7 

In several respects I consider my father as one of the 
most interesting men I have known. He was a man of 
perhaps the very largest natural endowment of any it has 
been my lot to converse with. None of us will ever forget 
that bold glowing st}^le of his, flowing free from his untu- 
tored soul, full of metaphors (though he knew not what a 
metaphor was) with all manner of potent words which he 
appropriated and applied with a surprising accuracy you 
often would not guess whence — brief, energetic, and which 
I should say conveyed the most perfect picture, definite, 
clear, not in ambitious colours but in full white sunlight, 
of all the dialects I have ever listened to. Nothing did I 
ever hear him undertake to render visible which did not 
become almost ocularly so. Never shall w^e s^ain hear 
such speech as that w^as. The whole district knew of it 
and laughed joyfully over it, not knowing how otherwise 
to express the feeling it gave them ; emphatic I have 
heard him beyond all men. In anger he had no need of 
oaths, his words w^ere like sharp arrows that smote into 
the very heart. The fault was that he exaggerated (which 
tendency I also inherit) yet only in description and for the 
sake chiefly of humorous effect. He was a man of rigid, 
even scrupulous veracity. I have often heard him turn 
back when he thought his strong words were misleading, 
and correct them into mensurative accuracy. 

I call him a natural man, singularly free from all man- 
ner of affectation ; he was among the last of the true men 
which* Scotland on the old system produced or can pro- 
duce ; a man healthy in body and mind, fearing God, and 
diligently working on God's earth with contentment, hope. 



8 JAMES CARLYLE. 

and unwearied resolution. He was never visited with 
doubt. The old theorem of the universe was sufficient 
for him ; and he worked well in it and in all senses suc- 
cessfully and wisely — as few can do. So quick is the 
motion of transition becoming, the new generation almost 
to a man must make their belly their God, and alas, find 
even that an empty one. Thus, curiously enough and 
blessedly, he stood a true man on the verge of the old, 
while his son stands here lovingly surveying him on the 
verge of the new, and sees the possibility of also being 
true there. God make the possibility, blessed possibility, 
into a reality. 

A virtue he had which I should learn to imitate. He 
never spoke of what zvas disagreeable and past. I have 
often wondered and admired at this. The thing that he 
had nothing to do with, he did nothing with. His was a 
healthy mind. In like manner I have seen him always 
when we young ones, half roguishly, and provokingly 
without doubt, were perhaps repeating sayings of his, sit 
as if he did not hear us at all. Never once did I know 
him utter a word, only once, that I remember, give a look 
in such a case. 

Another virtue the example of which has passed 
strongly into me was his settled placid indifference to 
the clamours or the murmurs of public opinion. For the 
judgment of those that had no right or power to judge 
him, he seemed simply to care nothing at all. He very 
rarely spoke of despising such things. He contented 
himself with altogether disregarding them. Hollow bab- 
ble it was for him, a thing, as Fichte said, that did not 



JAMES CARLYLE. 9 

exist ; das gar nicht existirte. There was something 
truly great in this. The very perfection of it hid from 
you the extent of the attainment. 

Or rather let us call it a new phasis of the health 
which in mind as in body was conspicuous in him. Like 
a healthy man, he wanted only to get along with his task. 
Whatsoever could not forward him in this (and how could 
public opinion and much else of the like sort do ?) was of 
no moment to him, was not there for him. 

This great maxim of philosophy he had gathered by 
the teaching of nature alone — that man was created to 
work — not to speculate, or feel, or dreamx. Accordingly 
he set his whole heart thitherwards. He did work wisely 
and unweariedly [Okite Hast aber ohne Rast) and perhaps 
performed more with the tools he had than any man I 
now know. It should have made me sadder than it did 
to hear the young ones sometimes complaining of his slow 
punctuality and thoroughness. He would leave nothing 
till it was done. Alas ! the age of substance and solidity 
is gone for the time ; that of show and hollow superficial- 
ity — in all senses — is in full course. 

And yet he was a man of open sense ; wonderfully so. 
I could have entertained him for days talking of any mat- 
ter interesting to man. He delighted to hear of all things 
that were worth talking of: the mode of living men had 
— the mode of working ; their opinions, virtues, whole 
spiritual and temporal environments. 

It is some two years ago (in summer) since I enter- 
tained him highly — he was hoeing turnips and perhaps I 
helped him — with an account of the character and manner 



10 JAMES CARLYLE. 

of existence of Francis Jeffrey. Another evening he en- 
joyed — probably it was on this very visit — with the heart- 
iest rehsh my description of the people, I think, of Tur- 
key. The Chinese had astonished him much. In some 
magazine he had got a sketch of Macartney's *' Embassy,'' 
the memory of which never left him. Adam Smith's 
*' Wealth of Nations," greatly as it lay out of his course, 
he had also fallen in with, and admired and understood 
and remembered so far as he had any business with it. I 
once wrote him about my being in Smithfield Market 
seven years ago, of my seeing St. Paul's. Both things in- 
terested him heartily and dwelt with him. I had hoped 
to tell him much of what I saw in this second visit, and 
that many a long cheerful talk would have given us both 
some sunny hours, but es koii7ite nimmer seyii. Patience ! 
hope ! 

At the same time he had the most entire and open con- 
tempt for all idle tattle ; what he called clatter. Any 
talk that had meaning in it he could listen to. What had 
no meaning in it — above all, what seemed false — he abso- 
lutely could and v/ould not hear, but abruptly turned 
aside from it, or if that might not suit, with the besom 
of destruction swept it far away from him. Long may we 
remember his " I don't believe thee ; " his tongue-paral- 
ysing, cold, indifferent " Hah ! " I should say of him as 
I did of our sister ' whom we lost, that he seldom or never 
spoke except actually to convey an idea. Measured by 
quantity of words, he was a talker of fully average copi- 
ousness • by extent of meaning communicated, he was 

* Margaret, who died in 1831. 



JAMES CARLYLE. II 

the most copious I have Hstened to. How in few sen- 
tences he would sketch you off an entire biography, an 
entire object or transaction, keen, clear, rugged, genuine, 
completely rounded in. His words came direct from the 
heart by the inspiration of the moment. 

" It is no idle tale," he said to some laughing rustics 
while stating in his strong way some complaint against 
them, and their laughter died into silence. Dear, good 
father ! There looked honestly through those clear ear- 
nest eyes a sincerity that compelled belief and regard. 
" Moffat," said he one day to an incorrigible reaper, 
" thou hast had every feature of a bad shearer — high, 
rough, and little on't. Thou maun alter thy figure or 
slant the bog," pointing to the man's road homewards. 

He was irascible, choleric, and we all dreaded his 
wrath, yet passion never mastered him or maddened him. 
It rather inspired him with new vehemence of insight and 
more piercing emphasis of wisdom. It must have been a 
b'old man that did not quail before that face when glowing 
with indignation, grounded, for so it ever was, on the 
sense of right and in resistance of wrong. More than 
once has he lifted up his strong voice in tax courts and the 
like before ** the gentlemen" (what he knew of highest 
among men,) and rending asunder official sophisms, thun- 
dered even into their deaf ears the indignant sentence of 
natural justice to the conviction of all. Oh, why did we 
laugh at these things while we loved them ? There is a 
tragic greatness and sacredness in them now. 

I can call my father a brave man {em tapferer). Man's 
face he did not fear ; God he always feared. His rever- 



12 JAMES CARLYLE. 

ence I think was considerably mixed with fear ; yet not 
slavish fear, rather awe, as of unutterable depths of silence 
through which flickered a trembling hope. How he used 
to speak of death, especially in late years — or rather to be 
silent, and look at it ! There was no feeling in him here 
that he cared to hide. He trembled at the really terrible ; 
the mock terrible he cared nought for. That last act of 
his life, when in the last agony, with the thick ghastly va- 
pours of death rising round him to choke him, he burst 
through and called with a man's voice on the Great God 
to have mercy on him — that was like the epitome and 
concluding summary of his whole life. God gave him 
strength to wrestle with the King of Terrors, and as it 
were even then to prevail. All his strength came from 
God and ever sought new nourishment there. God be 
thanked for it. 

Let me not mourn that my father's force is all spent, 
that his valour wars no longer. Has it not gained the vic- 
tory ? Let me imitate him rather. Let his courageous 
heart beat anew in me, that when oppression and opposi- 
tion unjustly threaten, I too may rise with his spirit to 
front them and subdue them. 

On the whole, ought I not to rejoice that God was 
pleased to give me such a father; that from earliest years 
I had the example of a real Man of God's own making con- 
tinually before me ? Let me learn of him. Let me write 
my books as he built his houses, and walk as blamelessly 
through this shadow world ; if God so will, to rejoin him 
at last. Amen. 

Alas ! such is the mis-education of these days, it is 



JAMES CARLYLE. 1 3 

only among those that are called the uneducated classes 
— those educated by experience — that you can look for a 
Man. Even among these, such a sight is growing daily 
rarer. My father, in several respects, has not, that I can 
think of, left his fellow. Ultimtis Romatioricm. Perhaps 
among Scottish peasants what Samuel Johnson was among 
English authors. I have a sacred pride in my peasant 
father, and would not exchange him, even now, for any 
king known to me. Gold and the guinea stamp — the 
Man and the clothes of the man. Let me thank God for 
that greatest of blessings, and strive to live worthily of it. 
Though from the heart, and practically even more than 
in words, an independent man, he was by no means an 
insubordinate one. His bearing towards his superiors I 
consider noteworthy — of a piece with himself. I think in 
early life, when working in Springhill for a Sir W. Max- 
well — the grandfather of the present Baronet — he had got 
an early respect impressed upon him. for the character as 
well as station of a gentleman. I have heard him often 
describe the grave wisdom and dignified deportment of 
that Maxwell as of a true *' ruler of the people." It used 
to remind me of the gentlemen in Goethe. Sir William, 
like those he ruled over, and benignantly or at least grace- 
fully and earnestly governed, has passed away. But even 
for the mere clothes-screens of rank, my father testified 
no contempt. He spoke of them in public or private 
without acerbity ; testified for them the outward defer- 
ence which custom and convenience prescribed, and felt 
no degradation therein. Their inward claim to regard 
was a thing which concerned them, not him. I love to 



14 JAMES CARLYLE. 

figure him addressing these men, with bared head, by the 
title of " your honour," with a manner respectful yet un- 
embarrassed ; a certain manful dignity looking through 
his own fine face, with his noble grey head bent patiently 
to the, alas ! unworthy. Such conduct is, perhaps, no 
longer possible. 

Withal, he had in general a grave natural politeness. 
I have seen him, when the women were perhaps all in 
anxiety about the disorder, etc., usher men in with true 
hospitality into his mean house, without any grimace of 
apologies, or the smallest seeming embarrassment. Were 
the house but a cabin, it was his, and they were welcome 
to him, and what it held. This was again the man. His 
life was "no idle tale;" not a lie but a truth, which 
whoso liked was welcome to come and examine. " An 
earnest toilsome life," which had also a serious issue. 

The more I reflect on it, the more I must admire how 
completely nature had taught him ; how completely he 
was devoted to his work, to the task of his life, and con- 
tent to let all pass by unheeded that had not relation to 
this. It is a singular fact, for example, that though a man 
of such openness and clearness, he had never, I believe, 
read three pages of Burns' poems. Not even when all 
about him became noisy and enthusiastic, I the loudest, 
on that matter, did he feel it worth while to renew his in- 
vestigation of it, or once turn his face towards it. The 
poetry he liked (he did not call it poetry) was truth, and 
the wisdom of reality. Burns, indeed, could have done 
nothing for him. As high a greatness hung over his 
world as over that of Burns — the ever-present greatness 



JAMES CARLYLE. 1 5 

of the Infinite itself. Neither was he, like Burns, called to 
rebel against the world, but to labour patiently at his task 
there, uniting the possible with the necessary to bring out 
the real, wherein also lay an ideal. Burns could not have 
in any way strengthened him in this course ; and there- 
fore was for him a phenomenon merely. Nay, rumour 
had been so busy with Burns, and destiny and his own 
desert had in very deed so marred his name, that the 
good rather avoided him. Yet it was not with aversion 
that my father regarded Burns ; at worst with indiffer- 
ence and neglect. I have heard him speak of once seeing 
him standing in ** Rob Scott's smithy" (at Ecclefechan, 
no doubt superintending some work). He heard one say, 
*' There is the poet Burns." He went out to look, and 
saw a man with boots on, like a well-dressed farmer, walk- 
ing down the village on the opposite side of the burn. 
This was all the relation these two men ever had ; they 
were very nearly coevals.^ I knew Robert Burns, and I 
knew my father. Yet were you to ask me which had the 
greater natural faculty, I might perhaps actually pause 
before replying. Burns had an infinitely wider education, 
my father a far wholesomer. Besides, the one was a man 
of musical utterance ; the other wholly a man of action, 
with speech subservient thereto. Never, of all the men 
I have seen, has one come personally in my way in whom 
the endowment from nature and the arena from fortune 
were so utterly out of all proportion. I have said this 
often, and partly know it. As a man of speculation — had 
culture ever unfolded him — he must have gone wild and 

^ Burns died the year after Thomas Carlyle was born. 



l6 JAMES CARLYLE. 

desperate as Burns ; but he was a man of conduct, and 
work keeps all right. What strange shapeable creatures 
we are ! 

My father's education was altogether of the worst and 
most limited. I believe he was never more than three 
months at any school. What he learned there showed 
what he might have learned. A solid knowledge of 
arithmetic, a fine antique handwriting — these, with other 
limited practical etceteras, were all the things he ever 
heard mentioned as excellent. He had no room to strive 
for more. Poetry, fiction in general, he had universally 
seen treated as not only idle, but false and criminal. This 
was the spiritual element he had lived in, almost to old 
age. But greatly his most important culture he had 
gathered — and this, too, by his own endeavours — from 
the better part of the district, the religious men ; to 
whom, as to the most excellent, his own nature gradually 
attached and attracted him. He was religious with the 
consent of his whole faculties. Without religion he would 
have been nothing, Indeed, his habit of intellect was 
thoroughly free, and even incredulous. And strongly 
enough did the daily example of this work afterwards on 
me. ''Putting out the natural eye of his mind to see 
better with a telescope" — this was no scheme for him. 
But he was in Annandale, and it was above fifty years 
ago,* and a Gospel was still preached there to the heart of 
a man in the tones of a man. Religion was the pole-star 
for my father. Rude and uncultivated as he otherwise 
was, it made him and kept him " in all points a man." 

J Written in 1832. 



JAMES CARLYLE. 1/ 

Oh ! when I think that all the area in boundless space 
he had seen was limited to a circle of some fifty miles 
diameter (he never in his life was farther or elsewhere so 
far from home as at Craigenputtoch), and all his knowl- 
edge of the boundless time was derived from his Bible 
and what the oral memories of old men could give him, 
and his own could gather ; and yet, that he was such, I 
could take shame to myself. I feel to my father — so 
great though so neglected, so generous also towards me — 
a strange tenderness, and mingled pity and reverence 
peculiar to the case, infinitely soft and near my heart. 
Was he not a sacrifice to me ? Had I stood in his place, 
could he not have stood in mine, and more ? Thou good 
father ! well may I for ever honour thy memory. Surely 
that act was not without its reward. And was not nature 
great, out of such materials to make such a man ? 

Though genuine and coherent, '* living and hfe-giving," 
he was, nevertheless, but half developed. We had all to 
complain that we durst not freely love him. His heart 
seemed as if walled in ; he had not the free means to un- 
bosom himself. My mother has owned to me that she 
could never understand him ; that her affection and (with 
all their little strifes) her admiration of him was obstructed. 
It seemed as if an atmosphere of fear repelled us from 
him. To me it was especially so. Till late years, when 
he began to respect me more, and, as it were, to look up 
to me for instruction, for protection (a relation unspeaka- 
bly beautiful), I was ever more or less awed and chilled 
before him. My heart and tongue played freely only 
with my mother. He had an air of deepest gravity, even 



1 8 JAMES CARLYLE. 

Sternness. Yet he could laugh with his whole throat, and 
his whole heart. I have often seen him weep, too ; his 
voice would thicken and his lips curve while reading the 
Bible. He had a merciful heart to real distress, though 
he hated idleness, and for imbecility and fatuity had no 
tolerance. Once — and I think once only — I saw him in a 
passion of tears. It was when the remains of my mother's 
fever hung upon her, in 1 817, and seemed to threaten the 
extinction of her reason. We were all of us nigh des- 
perate, and ourselves mad. He burst at last into quite a 
torrent of grief, cried piteously, and threw himself on the 
floor and lay moaning. I wondered, and had no words, 
no tears. It was as if a rock of granite had melted, and 
was thawing into water. What unknown seas of feeling 
lie in man, and will from time to time break through ! 

He was no niggard, but truly a wisely generous econo- 
mist. He paid his men handsomely and with overplus. 
He had known poverty in the shape of actual want (in 
boyhood) and never had one penny which he knew not 
well how he had come by, (" picked," as he said, '' out of 
the hard stone,") yet he ever parted with money as a man 
that knew when he was getting money's worth ; that could 
give also, and with a frank liberality when the fit occasion 
called. I remember with the peculiar kind of tenderness 
that attaches to many similar things in his life, one, or 
rather, I think, two times, when he sent vie to buy a 
quarter of a pound of tobacco, to give to some old wo- 
men, whom he had had gathering potatoes for him. He 
nipt off for each a handsome leash, and handed it her by 
way of over and above. This was a common principle 



JAMES CARLYLE. 1 9 

with him. I must have been twelve or thirteen when I 
fetched this tobacco. I love to think of it. '' The little 
that a just man hath." The old women are now perhaps 
all dead. He too is dead, but the gift still lives. 

He was a man singularly free from affectation. The 
feeling that he had not he could in no wise pretend to 
have ; however ill the want of it might look, he simply 
would not and did not put on the show of it. 

Singularly free from envy I may reckon him too, the 
rather if I consider his keen temper and the value he nat- 
urally (as a man wholly for action) set upon success in 
life. Others that (by better fortune ; none was more in- 
dustrious or more prudent) had grown richer than he, did 
not seem to provoke the smallest grudging in him. They 
were going their path, he going his ; one did not impede 
the other. He rather seemed to look at such with a kind 
of respect, a desire to learn from them — at lowest with 
indifference. 

In like manner, though he above all things (indeed in 
strictness solely) admired talent, he seemed never to have 
measured himself anxiously against anyone ; was content 
to be taught by whosoever could teach him. One or two 
Qien, immeasurably his inferiors in faculty, he, I do be- 
lieve, looked up to and thought with perfect composure 
abler minds than himself. 

Complete at the same time was his confidence in his 
own judgment when it spoke to him decisively. He was 
one of those few that could believe and know as well as 
enquire and be of opinion. When I remember how much 
he admired intellectual force, how much he had of it him- 



20 JAMES CARLYLE. 

self, and yet how unconsciously and contentedly he gave 
others credit for superiority, I again see the healthy spirit 
of the genuine man. Nothing could please him better 
than a well-ordered discourse of reason, the clear solution 
and exposition of any object, and he knew well in such 
cases when the nail had been hit, and contemptuously 
enough recognised when it had been missed. He has 
said of a bad preacher, '' he was like a fly wading among 
tar." Clearness, emphatic clearness, was his highest 
category of man's thinking power. He delighted always 
to hear good argument. He would often say, ** I would 
like to hear thee argue with him." He said this of Jeffrey 
and me, with an air of such simple earnestness, not two 
years ago (1830), and it was his true feeling. I have 
often pleased him much by arguing with men (as many 
years ago I was prone to do) in his presence. He re- 
joiced greatly in my success, at all events in my dexter- 
ity and manifested force. Others of us he admired for 
our "activity," our practical valour and skill, all of us 
(generally speaking) for our decent demeanour in the 
world. It is now one of my greatest blessings (for which 
I would thank Heaven from the heart) that he lived to see 
me, through various obstructions, attain some look of 
doing well. He had *' educated" me against much ad- 
vice, I believe, and chiefly, if not solely, from his own 
noble faith. James Bell, one of our wise men, had told 
him, ''Educate a boy, and he grows up to despise his 
ignorant parents." My father once told me this, and 
added, *' Thou hast not done so ; God be thanked for it." 
I have reason to think my father was proud of me (not 



JAMES CARLYLE. 21 

vain, for he never, except when provoked, openly bragged 
of us) ; that here too he hved to see the pleasure of the 
Lord prosper in his hands. Oh, was it not a happiness 
for me ! The fame of all this planet were not henceforth 
so precious. 

He was thrifty, patient, careless of outward accommo- 
dation, had a Spartan indifference to all that. When he 
quarrelled about such things it was rather because some 
human mismanagemejit seemed to look through the evil. 
Food and all else were simply and solely there as the 
means /(?r doing work. We have lived for months of old 
(and when he was not any longer poor), because by our- 
selves, on porridge and potatoes, with no other condi- 
ment than what our own cow yielded. Thus are we not 
now all becra;ars, as the most like us have become. Mother 
and father were assiduous, abstemious, frugal without 
stinginess. They shall not want their reward. Both still 
knew what they were doing in this world, and why they 
were here. ** Man's chief end," my father could have 
answered from the depths of his soul, " is to glorify God 
and enjoy Him forever." By this light he walked, choos- 
ing his path, fitting prudence to principle with wonderful 
skill and manliness ; through " the ruins of a falling era," 
not once missing his footing. Go thou, whom by the 
hard toil of his arms and his mind he has struggled to 
enlighten better ; go thou, and do likewise. 

His death was unexpected ? Not so ; every morning 
and every evening, for perhaps sixty years, he had prayed 
to the Great Father in words which I shall now no more 
hear him impressively pronounce, ** Prepare us for those 



22 JAMES CARLYLE. 

solemn events, death, judgment, and eternity." He 
would pray also, '*' Forsake us not now when we are old 
and our heads grown grey." God did not forsake him. 

Ever since I can remember, his honoured head was 
grey ; indeed he must have been about forty when I was 
born. It was a noble head ; very large, the upper part 
of it strikingly like that of the poet Goethe : the mouth 
again bearing marks of unrefinement, shut indeed and 
significant, yet loosely compressed (as I have seen in the 
firmest men if used to hard manual labour), betokening 
depth, passionateness, force ; all in an element not of lan- 
guor, yet of toil and patient perennial endurance. A face 
full of meaning' and earnestness, a man of strength and 
a man of toil. Jane (Mrs. Carlyle) took a profile of him 
when she was last in Annandale. It is the only memorial 
we have left, and worth much to us. He was short of 
stature, yet shorter than usual only in the limbs ; of great 
muscular strength, far more than even his strong-built 
frame gave promise of. In all things he was emphati- 
cally temperate ; through life guilty (more than can be 
said of almost any man) of no excess. 

He was born (I think) in the year 1757, at a place 
called Brownknowe, a small farm not far from Burnswark 
Hill in Annandale. I have heard him describe the an- 
guish of mind he felt when leaving this place, and taking 
farewell of a "big stone" whereon he had been wont to 
sit in early boyhood tending the cattle. Perhaps there 
was a thorn tree near it. His heart, he said, was like to 

' Carlyle breaks off for a moment and writes these words : '* About this 
hour is the funeral. Irving enters. Unsatisfactory." He then goes on. 



JAMES CARLYLE. 23 

burst ; they were removing to Sibbaldry Side, another 
farm in the valley of Dryfe. He was come to full man- 
hood. The family was exposed to great privations while 
at Brownknowe. The mother, Mary Gillespie (she had 
relations at Dryfesdale) was left with her children, and 
had not always meal to make them porridge. My father 
was the second son and fourth child. My grandfather, 
Thomas Carlyle, after whom I am named, was an honest, 
vehement, adventurous, but not an industrious man. He 
used to collect vigorously and rigorously a sum sufficient 
for his half year's rent (probably some five or six pounds), 
lay this by, and, for the rest, leaving the mother with her 
little ones to manage very much as they could, would 
meanwhile amuse himself, perhaps hunting, most prob- 
ably with the Laird of Bridekirk (a swashbuckler of those 
days, composer of '' Bridekirk's Hunting"), partly in the 
character of kinsman, partly of attendant and henchman. 
I have heard my father describe the shifts they were re- 
duced to at home. Once, he said, meal, which had per- 
haps been long scarce, and certainly for some time want- 
ing, arrived at last late at night. The mother proceeded 
on the spot to make cakes of it, and had no fuel but straw 
that she tore from the beds (straw hes under the chaff 
sacks we all slept on) to do it with. The children all rose 
to eat. Potatoes were little in use then; a'^wechtful" 
was stored up to be eaten perhaps about Halloween. My 
father often told us how he once, with a providence early 
manifested, got possession of four potatoes, and thinking 
that a time of want might come, hid them carefully against 
the evil day. He found them long after all grown to- 



24 JAMES CARLYLE. 

gether ; they had not been needed. I think he once told 
us his first short clothes were a hull made mostly or 
wholly of leather. We all only laughed, for it is now 
long ago. Thou dear father ! Through what stern ob- 
structions was thy way to manhood to be forced, and for 
us and for our travelling to be made smooth. 

My grandfather, whom I can remember as a slightish, 
wiry-looking old man, had not possessed the wisdom of his 
son. Yet perhaps he was more to be pitied than blamed. 
His mother, whose name I have forgotten, was early left 
a widow with two of them, in the parish, perhaps in the 
village, of Middlebie. Thomas, the elder, became a joiner 
and went to work in Lancashire, perhaps in Lancaster, 
where he stayed more than one season. He once returned 
home in winter, partly by ice — skating along the West- 
moreland and Cumberland lakes. He was in Dumfries- 
shire in 1745 : saw the Highlanders come through Eccle- 
fechan over the Border heights as they went down : was 
at Dumfries among them as they returned back in flight. 
He had gone, by the Lady of Bridekirk's request, to look 
after the Laird, whom, as a Whig of some note, they had 
taken prisoner. His whole adventures there he had mi- 
nutely described to his children (I too have heard him 
speak, but briefly and indistinctly, of them) : by my 
uncle Frank I once got a full account of the matter, 
which shall perhaps be inserted elsewhere. He worked 
as carpenter, I know not how long, about Middlebie ; 
then laid aside that craft (except as a side business, for 
he always had tools which I myself have assisted him in 
grinding) and went to Brownknowe to farm. In his latter 



JAMES CARLYLE. 25 

days he was chiefly supported by my father, to whom I 
remember once hearing him say, with a half-choked trem- 
ulous palsied voice, " Thou hast been a good son to me." 
He died in 1804. I well remember the funeral, which I 
was at, and that I read (being then a good reader), 
*• MacEvven on the Types" (which I have not seen since, 
but then partially understood and even liked for its glib 
smoothness) to the people sitting at the wake. The 
funeral was in time of snow. All is still very clear to 
me. The three brothers, my father, Frank, and Tom, 
spoke together in the dusk on the street of Ecclefechan, 
I looking up and listening. Tom proposed that he would 
bear the whole expense, as he had been ''rather back- 
ward during his life," which offer was immediately re- 
jected. 

Old Thomas Carlyle had been proud and poor. No 
doubt he was discontented enough. Industry was perhaps 
more difficult in Annandale then (this I do not think very 
likely). At all events the man in honour (the ma7i) of 
those days in that rude border country was a drinker and 
hunter ; above all, a striker. My grandfather did not 
drink, but his stroke was ever as ready as his word, and 
both were sharp enough. He was a fiery man, irascible, 
indomitable, of the toughness and springiness of steel. 
An old market brawl, called the ''Ecclefechan Dog-fight," 
in which he was a principal, survives in tradition there to 
this day. My father, who in youth too had been in quar- 
rels, and formidable enough in them, but from manhood 
upwards abhorred all such things, never once spoke to us 
of this. My grandfather had a certain religiousness ; but 



26 JAMES CARLYLE. 

it could not be made dominant and paramount. His life 
lay in two. I figure him as very miserable, and pardon 
(as my father did) all his irregularities and unreasons. My 
father liked in general to speak of him when it came in 
course. He told us sometimes of his once riding down 
to Annan (when a boy) behind him, on a sack of barley 
to be shipped, for which there was then no other mode 
of conveyance but horseback. On arriving at Annan 
bridge the people demanded three-halfpence of toll money. 
This the old man would in no wise pay, for tolls were then 
reckoned pure imposition, got soon into argument about 
it, and rather than pay it turned his horse's head aside 
and swam the river at a dangerous place, to the extreme 
terror of his boy. Perhaps it was on this same occasion, 
while the two were on the shore about Whinnyrigg with 
many others on the same errand, (for a boat had come in, 
from Liverpool probably, and the country must hasten to 
ship) that a lad of larger size jeered at the little boy for 
his ragged coat, etc. Whereupon his father, doubtless 
provoked too, gave him permission to fight the wrong- 
doer, which he did and with victory. *' Man's inhumanity 
to man." 

I must not dwell on these things, yet will mention the 
other brother, my grand-uncle Francis, still remembered 
by his title, "the Captain of Middlebie." He was bred 
a shoemaker, and like his elder brother went to travel for 
work and insight. My father once described to me with 
pity and aversion how Francis had on some occasion 
taken to drinking and to gaming ** far up in England" 
(Bristol ?), had lost all his money and gc^e to bed drunk. 



JAMES CARLYLE. 27 

He awoke next morning in horrors, started up, stung by 
the serpent of remorse, and flinging himself out of bed, 
broke his leg against a table standing near, and lay there 
sprawling, and had to lie for weeks, with nothing to pay 
the shot. Perhaps this was the crisis of his life. Perhaps 
it was to pay the bill of this very tavern that he went and 
enlisted himself on board some small-craft man of war. 
A mutiny (as I have heard) took place, wherein Francis 
Carlyle with great daring stood by the Captain and quelled 
the matter, for which service he was promoted to the 
command of a revenue ship, and sailed therein chiefly 
about the Solway Seas, and did feats enough, of which 
perhaps elsewhere. He had retired with dignity on half- 
pay to his native Middlebie before my birth. I never saw 
him but once, and then rather memorably. 

My grandfather and he, owing to some sort of cloud 
and misunderstanding, had not had any intercourse for 
long ; in which division the two families had joined. But 
now, when old Thomas was lying on his probable, and as 
it proved actual, deathbed, the old rugged sea-captain re- 
lented, and resolved to see his brother yet once before 
he died. 

He came in a cart to Ecclefechan (a great enterprise 
then, for the road was all water-cut, and nigh impassable 
with roughness). I chanced to^ be standing by when he 
arrived. He was a grim, broad, to me almost terrible 
man, unwieldy so that he could not walk. (My brother 
John is said to resemble him. He was my prototype 
of Smollett's Trunnion.) They hfted him up the steep 
straight stairs in a chair to the room of the dying man. 



28 JAMES CARLYLE. 

The two old brothers saluted each other, hovering over 
the brink of the grave. They were both above eighty. 
In some twenty minutes the arm-chair was seen again de- 
scending (my father, bore one corner of it in front) ; the 
old man had parted with his brother for the last time. 
He went away with few words, but with a face that still 
dimly haunts me, and I never saw him more. The busi- 
ness at the moment was quite unknown to me, but I, 
gathered it in a day or two, and its full meaning long 
afterwards grew clear to me. Its outward phasis, now 
after some twenty-eight years, is plain as I have written. 
Old Francis also died not long afterwards. 

One vague tradition I will mention, that our humble 
forefathers dwelt long as farmers at Burrens, the old 
Roman Station in Middlebie. Once, in times of Border 
robbery, some Cumberland cattle had been stolen and 
were chased. The traces of them disappeared at Burrens, 
and the angry Cumbrians demanded of the poor farmer 
what had become of them. It wa^ vain for him to an- 
swer and aver (truly) that he knew nothing of them, had 
no concern with them. He was seized by the people, and 
despite his own desperate protestations, despite his wife's 
shriekings and his children's cries, he was hanged on the 
spot. The case even in those days was thought piteous, 
and a perpetual gift of the little farm was made to the 
poor widow as some compensation. Her children and 
children's children continued to possess it till their title 
was questioned by the Duke (of Oueensberry), and they 
(perhaps in my great-grandfather's time, about 1720) were 
ousted. Date and circumstances for the tale are all 



JAMES CARLYLE. 29 

wanting. This is my remotest outlook into the past, and 
itself but a cloudy half or whole hallucination ; farther oh 
there is not even a hallucination. I now return. These 
things are secular and unsatisfactory. 

Bred up in such circumstances, the boys were accus- 
tomed to all manner of hardship, and must trust for up- 
bringing to nature, to the scanty precepts of their poor 
mother, and to what seeds or influences of culture were 
hanging as it were in the atmosphere of their environ- 
ment. Poor boys ! they had to scramble, scraffle, for 
their very clothes and food. They knit, they thatched 
for hire, above all they hunted. My father had tried all 
these things almost in boyhood. Every dell and burngate 
and cleugh of that district he had traversed, seeking 
hares and the like. He used to tell of these pilgrimages. 
Once I remember his gun-flint was tied on with a hat- 
band. He was a real hunter, like a wild Indian, from 
necessity. The hare's flesh was food. Hare-skins (at 
some sixpence each) would accumulate into the purchase 
money of a coat. All these things he used to speak of 
without either boasting or complaining, not as reproaches 
to us, but as historical merely. On the whole, he never 
complained either of the past, the present, or the future. 
He observed and accurately noted all : he made the most 
and the best of all. His hunting years were not useless 
to him. Misery was early training the rugged boy into a 
stoic, that one day he might be the assurance of a Scot- 
tish man. 

One Macleod, Sandy Macleod, a wandering pensioner 
invalided out of some Highland regiment (who had served 



30 JAMES CARLYLE. 

in America, I must think with General Wolfe), had 
strayed to Brownknowe with his old wife and taken a 
cottage of my grandfather. He with his wild foreign 
legends and strange half-idiotic, half-genial ways, was a 
great figure with the young ones, and I think acted not a 
little on their character, — least of any, however, on my 
father, whose early turn for the practical and real made 
him more heedless of Macleod and his vagaries. The old 
pensioner had quaint sayings not without significance. 
Of a lachrymose complaining man, for example, he said 
(or perhaps to him), " he might be thankful he was not in 
purgatory." 

The quaint fashion of speaking, assumed for humor, 
and most noticeable in my uncle Frank, least or hardly at 
all in my father, was no doubt partly derived from this 
old wanderer, who was much about their house, working 
for his rent and so forth, and was partly laughed at, 
partly wondered at, by the young ones. Tinkers also, 
nestling in outhouses, making pot metal, and with rude 
feuds and warfare, often came upon the scene. These, 
with passing Highland drovers, were perhaps their only 
visitors. Had there not been a natural goodness and in- 
destructible force in my father, I see not how he could 
have bodied himself forth from these mean impediments. 
I suppose good precepts were not wanting. There was 
the Bible to read. Old John Orr, the schoolmaster, used 
from time to time to lodge with them ; he was religious 
and enthusiastic (though in practice irregular with drink). 
In my grandfather also there seems to have been a certain 
geniality ; for instance, he and a neighbour, Thomas 



JAMES CARLYLE. 3 1 

Hogg, read "Anson's Voyages," also the "Arabian 
Nights," for which latter my father, armed with zealous 
conviction, scrupled not to censure them openly. By one 
means or another, at an early age he had acquired princi- 
ples, lights that not only flickered but shone steadily to 
guide his way. 

It must have been in his teens, perhaps rather early, 
that he and his elder brother John, with William Bell 
(afterwards of Wylie Hill, and a noted drover), and his 
brother, all met in the kiln at Relief to play cards. The 
corn was dried then at home. There was a fire, 
therefore, and perhaps it was both heat and light. The 
boys had played, perhaps, often enough for trifling stakes, 
and always parted in good humour. One night they came 
to some disagreement. My father spoke out what w^as in 
him about the folly, the sinfulness, of quarrelling over a 
perhaps sinful amusement. The earnest mind persuaded 
other minds. They threw the cards into the fire, and (I 
think the younger Bell told my brother James), no one of 
the four ever touched a card again through life. My 
father certainly never hinted at such a game since I knew 
him. I cannot remember that I, at that age, had any such 
force of belief. Which of us can ? 

{^Friday night. My father is now in his grave, sleeping 
by the side of his loved ones, his face to the east, under 
the hope of meeting the Lord when He shall come to judg- 
ment, when the times shall be fulfilled. Mysterious life ! 
Yes, there is a God in man. Silence ! since thou hast no 
voice. To imitate him, I will pause here for the night. 
God comfort my brother. God guard them all.] 



32 JAMES CARLYLE. 

Of old John Orr I must say another word. My father, 
who often spoke of him, though not so much latterly, gave 
me copious description of that and other antiquarian mat- 
ters in one of the pleasantest days I remember, the last 
time but one (or perhaps two) that we talked together. 
A tradition of poor old Orr, as of a man of boundless love 
and natural worth, still faintly lives in Annandale. If I 
mistake not, he worked also as a shoemaker. He was 
heartily devout, yet subject to fits of irregularity. He 
would vanish for weeks into obscure tippling-houses ; then 
reappear ghastly and haggard in body and mind, shattered 
in health, torn with gnawing remorse. Perhaps it was in 
some dark interval of this kind (he was already old) that 
he bethought him of his father, and how he was still lying 
without a stone of memorial. John had already ordered 
a tombstone for him, and it was lying worked, and I sup- 
pose, lettered and ready, at some mason's establishment 
(up the water of Mein), but never yet carried to the place. 
Probably Orr had not a shilling of money to hire any car- 
ter with, but he hurried off to the spot, and desperately 
got the stone on his back. It was a load that had nigh 
killed him. He had to set it down ever and anon and 
rest, and get it up again. The night fell. I think some 
one found him desperately struggling with it near Main 
Hill, and assisted him, and got it set in its place. 

Though far above all quackery, Orr was actually em- 
ployed to exorcise a house ; some house or room at Or- 
chard, in the parish of Hoddam. He entered the haunted 
place ; was closeted in it for some time, speaking and 
praying. The ghost was really and truly laid, for no one 



JAMES CARLYLE. 33 

heard more of It. Beautiful reverence, even of the rude 
and ignorant, for the infinite nature of wisdom in the in- 
finite hfe of man. 

Orr, as ah-eady said, used to come much about Brown- 
knowe, being habitually itinerant ; and (though school- 
master of Hoddam) without settled home. He commonly, 
my father said, slept with some of the boys ; in a place 
where, as usual, there were several beds. He would call 
out from the bed to my grandfather, also in his, " Gude- 
man, I have found it ; " found the solution of some prob- 
lem or other, perhaps arithmetical, which they had been 
struggling with ; or, ** Gudeman, what d'ye think of this ? " 

I represent him to myself as a squat, pursy kind of 
figure, grim, dusky ; the blandest and most bounteous of 
cynics. Also a form of the past. He was my father's 
sole teacher in schooling. 

It might be in the year, I think, 1773, that one Wil- 
liam Brown, a mason from Peebles, came down into An- 
nandale to do some work ; perhaps boarded in my grand- 
father's house ; at all events married his eldest daughter's 
child, my now old and vehement, then young and spirited, 
Aunt Fanny. This worthy man, whose nephew is still 
minister of Eskdalemuir (and author of a book on the 
Jews), proved the greatest blessing to that household. 
My father would, in any case, have saved himself. Of 
the other brothers, it may be doubted whether William 
Brown was not the primary preserver. They all learned 
to be maso7is from him, or from one another ; instead of 
miscellaneous labourers and hunters, became regular 
tradesmen, the best in all their district, the skilfullest and 
3 



34 JAMES CARLYLE. 

faithfullest, and the best rewarded every way. Except 
my father, none of them attained a decisive rehgiousness. 
But they all had prudence and earnestness, love of truth, 
industry, and the blessings it brings. My father, before 
my time, though not the eldest, had become, in all senses, 
the head of the house. The eldest was called John. He 
early got asthma, and for long could not work, though he 
got his share of the wages still. I can faintly remember 
him as a pallid, sickly figure ; and even one or two insig- 
nificant words, and the breathless tone he uttered them 
in. When seized with extreme fits of sickness he used to 
gasp out, " Bring* Jamie ; do send for Jamie." He died, 
I think, in 1802. I remember the funeral, and perhaps a 
day before it, how an ill-behaving servant wench lifted up 
the coverlid from off his pale, ghastly, befilleted head to 
show it to some crony of hers ; unheeding of me, who was 
alone with them, and to whom the sight gave a new pang 
of horror. He was the father of two sons and a daughter, 
beside whom our boyhood was passed, none of whom 
have come to anything but insignificance. He was a 
well-doing man, and left them well ; but their mother was 
not wise, nor they decidedly so. The youngest brother 
— my uncle Tom — died next ; a fiery, passionate, self-se- 
cluded, warm, loving, genuine soul, without fear and with- 
out guile : of whom it is recorded, he never from the first 
tones of speech, " told any lies." A true old-Roman soul, 
yet so marred and stunted, who well deserves a chapter 
to himself, especially from me, who so lovingly admired 
Tiim. He departed in my father's house, in my presence, 
in the year 181 5, the first death I had ever understood and 



JAMES CARLYLE. 35 

laid with its whole emphasis to heart. Frank followed 
next, at an interval of some five years ; a quaint, social, 
cheerful man, of less earnestness but more openness, fond 
of genealogies, old historic poems, queer sayings, and all 
curious and humane things he could come at. 

This made him the greatest favourite. The rest were 
rather feared ; my father, ultimately at least, universally 
feared and respected. Frank left two sons, as yet young ; 
one of whom, my namesake, gone to be a lawyer, is 
rather clever, how clever I have not fully seen. All these 
brothers were men of evidently rather peculiar endowment. 
They were (consciously) noted for their brotherly affec- 
tion and coherence, for their hard sayings and Jiard strike 
ingSy which only my father ever grew heartily to detest. 
All of them became prosperous ; got a name and posses- 
sions in their degree. It was a kindred warmly Hked, I 
believe, by those near it ; by those at a distance, viewed 
at worst and lowest, as something dangerous to meddle 
with, something not to be meddled with. 

What are the rich or the poor ? and how do the sim- 
ple annals of the poor differ from the complex annals of 
the rich, were they never so rich ? What is thy attain- 
ment compared with an Alexander's, a Mahomet's, a 
Napoleon's ? And what was theirs ? A temporary frac- 
tion of this planetkin, the whole round of which is but a 
sandgrain in the all, its whole duration but a moment in 
eternity. The poorer life or the rich one are but the 
larger or smaller (very little smaller) letters in which we 
write the apophthegms and golden sayings of life. It 
may be a false saying or it may be a true one. There 



36 JAMES CARlYLE. 

lies it all. This is of quite infinite moment ; the rest is, 
verily and indeed, of next to none. 

Perhaps my father was William Brown's first appren- 
tice. Somewhere about his sixteenth year, early in the 
course of the engagement, work grew scarce in Annan- 
dale. The two " slung their tools " (mallets and irons 
hung in two equipoised masses over the shoulder), and 
crossed the hills into Nithsdale to Auldgarth, where a 
bridge was building. This was my father's most foreign 
adventure. He never again, or before, saw anything so 
new ; or, except when he came to Craigenputtoch on 
visits, so distant. He loved to speak of it. That talking 
day we had together I made him tell it me all over again 
from the beginning, as a whole, for the first time. He 
was a ''hewer," and had some few pence a day. He 
could describe with the lucidest distinctness how the whole 
work went on, and "headers" and ''closers,*' solidly 
massed together, made an impregnable pile. He used to 
hear sermons in Closeburn church ; sometimes too in 
Dunscore. The men had a refreshment of ale, for which 
he too used to table his twopence, but the grown-up men 
generally, for the most part, refused them. A superin- 
tendent of the work, a mason from Edinburgh, who did 
nothing but look on, and, rather decidedly, insist on terms 
of contract, " took a great notion " of him ; was for hav- 
ing him to Edinburgh along with him. The master 
builder, pleased with his ingenious diligence, once laid a 
shilling on his ''banker" (stone bench for hewing on), 
which he rather ungraciously refused. A flood once car- 
ried off all the centres and woodwork. He saw the 



JAMES CARLYLE. ^ 

master anxiously, tremulously, watch through the rain as 
the waters rose. When they prevailed, and all went 
headlong, the poor man, Avringing his hands together, 
spread them out with open palms down the river, as if to 
say, "There !" 

* It was a noble moment, which I regret to have missed, 
when my father going to look at Craigenputtoch saw this 
work for the first time again after a space of more than 
fifty years. How changed was all else, this thing yet 
the same. Then he was a poor boy, now he was a re- 
spected old man, increased in worldly goods, honoured in 
himself and in his household. He grew alert (Jamie said) 
and eagerly observant, eagerly yet with sadness. Our 
country was all altered ; browsing knowes were become 
seed-fields ; trees, then not so much as seeds, now waved 
out broad boughs. The houses, the fields, the men were 
of another fashion. There was little that he could recog- 
nise. On reaching the bridge itself he started up to his 
knees in the cart, sat wholly silent and seemed on the point 
of weeping. 

Well do I remember the first time I saw this bridge 
twelve years ago in the dusk of a May day. I had walked 
from Muirkirk, sickly, forlorn, of saddest mood (for it was 
then my days of darkness). A rustic ansv/ered me, 
" Auldgarth." There it lay, silent, red in the red dusk. 
It was as if half a century of past time had fatefully for 
moments turned back. 

The master builder of this bridge was one Stewart of 
Minniyve, who afterwards became my uncle John Aitken's 
father-in-law. Him I once saw. My Craigenputtoch 



38 JAMES CARLYLE. 

mason, James Hainning's father, was the smith that 
** sharpened the tools." A noble craft it is, that of a ma- 
son ; a good building will last longer than most books, than 
one book of a million. The Auldgarth bridge still spans 
the water silently, defies its chafing. There hangs it and 
will hang grim and strong, when of all the cunning hands 
that piled it together, perhaps the last now is powerless 
in the sleep of death. O Time ! O Time ! wondrous and 
fearful art thou, yet there is in man what is above thee. 

Of my father's youth and opening manhood, and with 
what specialities this period was marked, I have but an 
imperfect notion. He was now master of his own actions, 
possessed of means by his own earning, and had to try 
the world on various sides, and ascertain wherein his own 
" chief end " in it actually lay. The first impulse of man 
is to seek for enjoyment. He lives with more or less im- 
petuosity, more or less irregularity, to conquer for himself 
a home and blessedness of a mere earthly kind. Not till 
later (in how many cases never) does he ascertain that on 
earth there is no such home : that his true home lies be- 
yond the world of sense, is a celestial home. Of these 
experimenting and tentative days my father did not speak 
with much pleasure ; not at all with exultation. He 
considered them days of folly, perhaps sinful days. Yet 
I, well know that his life even then was marked by tem- 
perance (in all senses), that he was abstemious, prudent, 
industrious as very few. 

I have a dim picture of him in his little world. In 
summer season diligently, cheerfully labouring with 
trowel and hammer, amused by grave talk and grave 



JAMES CARLYLE. 39 

humour with the doers of the craft. Building, walHng, 
is an operation that beyond most other manual ones re- 
quires incessant consideration — even new invention. I 
have heard good judges say that he excelled in it all 
persons they had seen. In the depth of winter I figure 
him with the others gathered round his father's hearth 
(now no longer so poor and desolate), hunting (but now 
happily for amusement, not necessity), present here and 
there at some merry meetings and social doings, as poor 
Annandale, for poor yet God-created men, might then 
offer. Contentions occur. In these he was no man to 
be played with : fearless, formidable (I think to all). 

In after times he looked back with sorrow on such 
things — yet to me they were not and are not other than 
interesting and innocent — scarcely ever, perhaps never, 
to be considered as aggressions, but always as defences, 
manful assertions of man's rights against men that would 
infringe them — and victorious ones. I can faintly picture 
out one scene which I got from him many years ago ; 
perhaps it was at some singing school ; a huge rude 
peasant was rudely insulting and defying the party my 
father belonged to, and the others quailed and bore it till 
he could bear it no longer, but clutches his rough adver- 
sary (who had been standing, I think, at some distance 
on some sort of height) by the two flanks, swings him 
with ireful force round in the air, hitting his feet against 
some open door, and hurled him to a distance, supine, 
lamed, vanquished, and utterly humbled. The whole 
business looks to me to have passed physically in a troub- 
lous moonlight. 



40 JAMES CARLYLE. 

In the same environment and hue does it now stand 
in my memory, sad and stern. He could say of such 
things " I am wae to think on't : " wae from repentance. 
Happy he who has nothing worse to repent of. 

In the vanities and gallantries of life (though such as 
these would come across him), he seems to have very 
sparingly mingled. One Robert Henderson, a dashing 
projector and devotee, with a dashing daughter, came 
often up in conversation. This was perhaps (as it were) 
my father's introduction to the ** pride of life : " from 
which, as his wont was, he appears to have derived little 
but iiistriLction, but expansion and experience. I have 
good reason to know he never addressed any woman ex- 
cept with views that were pure and manly. But happily 
he had been enabled very soon in this choice of the false 
and present against the true and future, to " choose the 
better part." Happily there still existed in Annandale 
an influence of goodness, pure emblems of a religion. 
There were yet men living from whom a youth of earnest- 
ness might learn by example how to become a man. Old 
Robert Brand, my father's maternal uncle, was probably 
of very great influence on him in this respect. Old Rob- 
ert was a rigorous religionist, thoroughly filled with a 
celestial philosophy of this earthly life, which showed im- 
pressively through his stout decision and somewhat cross- 
grained deeds and words. Sharp sayings of his are still 
recollected there, not unworthy of preserving. He was 
a man of iron firmness, a just man and of wise insight. I 
think my father, consciously and unconsciously, may have 
learnt more from him than from any other individual. 



JAMES CARLYLE. 41 

From the time when he connected himself openly 
with the rehgious, became a Burgher (strict, not strict- 
est species of Presbyterian Dissenter) may be dated his 
spiritual majority ; his earthly life was now enlightened 
and overcanopied by a heavenly. He was henceforth a 
man. 

Annandale had long been a lawless Border country. 
The people had ceased from foray riding, but not from 
its effects. The "gallant man" of those districts was 
still a wild, natural, almost animal man. A select few 
had only of late united themselves. They had built a 
little meeting-house at Ecclefechan, thatched with heath, 
and chosen them a priest, by name John Johnston, the 
priestliest man I ever under any ecclesiastical guise was 
privileged to look upon. He in his last years helped me 
well with my Latin (as he had done many) and oLhervvise 
produced me far higher benefit. This peasant union, 
this httle heath-thatched house, this simple evangelist, 
together constituted properly the church of that district. 
They were the blessing and the saving of many. On me 
too their pious heaven-sent influences still rest and live. 
Let them employ them well. There was in those days a 
"teacher of the people." He sleeps not far from my 
father (who built his monument) in the Ecclefechan 
churchyard; the teacher and the taught. "Blessed," I 
again say, " are the dead that die in the Lord. They do 
rest from their labours ; their works follow them." 

My father,'! think, was of the second race of religious 
men in Annandale. Old Robert Brand an ancient herds- 
man, old John Britten, and some others that I have seen. 



42 JAMES CARLYLE. 

were perhaps among the first. There is no third rising. 
Time sweeps all away with it so fast at this epoch. The 
Scottish Church has been shortlived, and was late in 
reaching thither. 

Perhaps it was in 1 791 that my father married one 
Janet Carlyle, a very distant kinswoman of his own (her 
father yet, I believe, lives, a professor of religion, but 
long time suspected to be none of the most perfect, 
though not w^ithout his worth). She brought him one 
son, John, at present a well-doing householder at Cocker- 
mouth. She left him and this little life in little more than 
a year. A mass of long fair w^oman's hair wdiich had be- 
longed to her long lay in a secret drawer at our house 
(perhaps still lies) ; the sight of it used to give me a cer- 
tain faint horror. It had been cut from her head near 
death, when she was in the height of fever. She was 
delirious, and would let none but my father cut it. He 
thought himself sure of infection, nevertheless consented 
readily, and escaped. Many ways I have understood he 
had much to suffer then, yet he never spoke of it, or only 
transiently, and with a historical stoicism. Let me here 
mention the reverent custom the. old men had in Annan- 
dale of treating death even in their loosest thoughts. It 
is now passing away ; with my father it was quite in- 
variable. Had he occasion to speak in the future, he 
would say I will do so and so, never failing to add (were 
it only against the morrow) *' if I be spared," *' if I live." 
The dead again he spoke of with perfect freedom, only 
with serious gravity (perhaps a lowering of the voice) and 
always, even in the most trivial conversation, adding, 



JAMES CARLYLE. 43 

"that's gane ; " " my brother John that's gane " did so 
and so. Ernst ist das Leben. 

He married again, in the beginning of 1/95, my 
mother, Margaret Aitken (a woman of to me the fairest 
descent — that of the pious, the just and wise). She was 
a faithful helpmate to him, toiling unweariedly at his side ; 
to us the best of all mothers ; to whom, for body and 
soul, I owe endless gratitude. By God's great mercy she 
is still left as a head and centre to us all, and may yet 
cheer us with her pious heroism through many toils, if 
God so please. I am the eldest child, born in 1795, 
December 4, and trace deeply in myself the character of 
both parents, also the upbringing and example of both ; 
the inheritance of their natural health, had not I and the 
time beat on it too hard. 

It must have been about the period of the first mar- 
riage that my father and his brothers, already master- 
masons, established themselves in Ecclefechan. They all 
henceforth began to take on a civil existence, to "■ accu- 
mulate " in all senses, to grow. They were among the 
best and truest men of their craft (perhaps the very best) 
in that whole district, and recompensed accordingly. 
Their gains were the honest wages of industry, their 
savings were slow but constant, and in my father's, con- 
tinued (from one source or other) to the end. He was 
born and brought up the poorest ; by his own right hand 
he had become wealthy, as he accounted wealth, and in 
all ways plentifully supplied. His household goods 
valued in money may perhaps somewhat exceed i,000/. 
In real inward worth that value was greater than that of 



44 JAMES CARLYLE. 

most kingdoms, than all Napoleon's conquests, which did 
not endure. He saw his children grow up round him to 
guard him and to do him honour. He had, ultimately, a 
hearty respect from all ; could look forward from his 
verge of this earth, rich and increased in goods, into an 
everlasting country, where through the immeasurable 
deeps, shone a solemn, sober hope. I must reckon my 
father one of the most prosperous men I have ever in my 
life known. 

Frugality and assiduity, a certain grave composure, 
an earnestness (not without its constraint, then felt as 
oppressive a little, yet which now yields its fruit) were 
the order of our household. We were all particularly 
taught that work (temporal or spiritual) was the only thing 
we had to do, and incited always by precept and example 
to do it well. An inflexible element of authority sur- 
rounded us all. We felt from the first (a useful thing), 
that our own wish had often nothing to say in the matter. 

It was not a joyful life (what life is ?), yet a safe, quiet 
one ; above most others (or any other I have witnessed) a 
wholesome one. We were taciturn rather than talkative. 
But if little was said, that little had generally a meaning. 
I cannot be thankful enough for my parents. My early, 
yet not my earliest recollections of my father have in 
them a certain awe which only now or very lately has 
passed into free reverence. I was parted from him in my 
tenth year, and never habitually lived with him after- 
wards. Of the very earliest I have saved some, and 
would not for moneys' worth lose them. All that be- 
longs to him has become very precious to me. 



JAMES CARLYLE. 45 

I can remember his carrying me across Mein Water, 
over a pool some few yards below where the present 
Meinfoot bridge stands. Perhaps I was in my fifth year. 
He was going to Luce, I think, to ask after some joiner. 
It was the loveliest summer evening I recollect. My 
memory dawns (or grows light) at the first aspect of the 
stream ; of the pool spanned by a wooden bow without 
railing, and a single plank broad. He lifted me against 
his thigh with his right hand, and walked careless along 
till we were over. My face was turned rather down- 
wards. I looked into the deep clear water and its re- 
flected skies with terror, yet with confidence that he 
could save me. Directly after, I, light of heart, asked of 
him what those little black things were that I sometimes 
seemed to create by rubbing the palms of my hands to- 
gether ; and can at this moment (the mind having been 
doubtless excited by the past peril) remember that I de- 
scribed them in these words, " little penny rows " (rolls) 
"but far less." He explained it wholly to me; *' my 
hands were not clean." He was very kind, and I loved 
him. All around this is dusk or night before and after. 
It is not my earliest recollection, not even of him. My 
earliest of all is a mad passion of rage at my elder brother 
John (on a visit to us likely from his grandfather) in which 
my father too figures, though dimly, as a kind o( cheerful 
comforter and soother. I had broken my little brown 
stool, by madly throwing it at my brother, and felt, for 
perhaps the first time, the united pangs of loss and of re- 
morse. I was perhaps hardly more than two years old, 
but can get no one to fix the date for me, though all is 



46 JAMES CARLYLE. 

still quite legible for myself with many of its features. I 
remember the first "new half-pence" (brought from 
Dumfries by my father and mother for Alick and me), 
and words that my uncle John said about it, in 1799 ! 
Backwards beyond all, dim ruddy images of deeper and 
deeper brown shade into the dark beginnings of being. 

I remember, perhaps in my fifth year, his teaching me 
arithmetical things, especially how to divide (my letters, 
taught me by my mother, I have no recollection of what- 
ever ; of reading scarcely any). He said, This is the 
divider (divisor) ; this etc. ; and gave me a quite clear 
notion how to do it. My mother said I would forget it 
all; to which he answered, "Not so much as they that 
have never learnt it." Five years or so after he said to 
me once, "Tom, I do not grudge thy schooling now, 
when thy uncle Frank owns thee to be a better arithme- 
tician than himself." 

He took me down to Annan Academy on the Whit- 
sunday morning, 1806 ; I trotting at his side in the way 
alluded to in Teufelsdrockh. It was a bright morning, 
and to me full of movement, of fluttering boundless 
hopes, saddened by parting with mother, with home, and 
which afterwards were cruelly disappointed. He called 
once or twice in the q-rand schoolroom, as he chanced to 
have business at Annan ; once sat down by me (as the 
master was out) and asked whether I was all well. The 
boys did not laugh as I feared ; perhaps durst not. 

He was always generous to me in my school ex- 
penses ; never by grudging look or word did he give me 
any pain. With a noble faith he launched me forth into 



JAMES CARLYLE. 47 

a world which himself had never been permitted to visit. 
Let me study to act worthily of him there. 

He wrote to me duly and affectionately while I was at 
college. Nothing that was good for me did he fail with 
his best ability to provide. His simple, true counsel and 
fatherly admonitions have now first attained their fit sa- 
credness of meaning. Pity for me if they be thrown away. 

His tolerance for me, his trust in me, was great. 
When I declined going forward into the Church (though 
his heart was set upon it), he respected my scruples, my 
volition, and patiently let me have my way. In after 
years, when I had peremptorily ceased from being a 
schoolmaster, though he inwardly disapproved of the step 
as imprudent, and saw me in successive summers linger- 
ing beside him in sickliness of body and mind, without 
outlook tow^ards any good, he had the forbearance to 
say at worst nothing, never once to w^hisper discontent 
with me. 

If my dear mother, with the trustfulness of a mother's 
heart, ministered to all my woes, outward and inward, and 
even against hope kept prophesying good, he, with whom 
I communicated far less, who could not approve my 
schemes, did nothing that was not kind and fatherly. His 
roof was my shelter, which a word from him (in those 
sour days of wounded vanity) would have deprived me of. 
He patiently let me have my way„ helping when he could, 
when he could not help never hindering. When hope 
again dawned for me, how hearty was his joy, yet how 
silent. I have been a happy son. 

On my first return from college (in the spring, 1810), 



48 JAMES CARLYLE. 

I met him in the Langlands road, walking out to try 
whether he would not happen to see mc coming. He had 
a red plaid about him ; was recovering from a fit of sick- 
ness (his first severe one) and there welcomed me back. 
It was a bright April day. Where is it now ? 

The great world-revolutions send in their disturbing 
billows to the remotest creek, and the overthrow of thrones 
more slowly overturns also the households of the lowly. 
Nevertheless in all cases the wise man adjusts himself. 
Even in these times the hand of the diligent maketh rich. 
My father had seen the American War, the French Rev- 
olution, the rise and fall of Napoleon. The last arrested 
him strongly. In the Russian Campaign he bought a 
London newspaper, which I read aloud to a little circle 
twice weekly. He was struck with Napoleon, and would 
say and look pregnant things about him. Empires won 
and empires lost (while his little household held together) 
and now it was all vanished like a tavern brawl. For the 
rest he never meddled with politics. He was not there to 
govern, but to be governed ; could still live and therefore 
did not revolt. I have heard him say in late years with 
an impressiveness which all his perceptions carried with 
them, that the lot of a poor man was growing worse and 
worse ; that the world would not and could not last as it 
was ; that mighty changes of which none saw the end were 
" on the way. To him, as one about to take his departure, 
the whole was but of secondary moment. He was looking 
towards '■ a city that had foundations." 

In the " dear years" (1799 and 1800) when the oat- 
meal was as high as ten shillings a stone, he had noticed 



JAMES CARLYLE. 49 

the labourers (I have heard him tell) retire each separate- 
ly to a brook, and there drink instead of dining, without 
complaint, anxious only to hide it. 

At Langholm he once saw a heap of smuggled tobacco 
publicly burnt. Dragoons were ranged round it with 
drawn swords ; some old women stretched through their 
old withered arms to snatch a little of it, and the dragoons 
did not hinder them. A natural artist ! 

The largest sum he ever earned in one 3^ear was, / 
thifik, lool. by the building of Cressneld House. He 
wisely quitted the mason trade at the time when the char- 
acter of it had changed, when universal poverty and van- 
ity made show and cheapness (here as everywhere) be 
preferred to substance ; when, as he said emphatically, 
honest trade " was done." He became farmer (of a wet 
clayey spot called Mainhill) in 1815, that so *' he might 
keep all his family about him," struggled with his old val- 
our, and here too prevailed. 

Two ears of corn are now in many places growing 
where he found only one. Unworthy or little worthy men 
for the time reap the benefit, but it was a benefit done to 
God's earth, and God's mankind will year after year get 
the good of it. 

In his contention with an unjust or perhaps only a mis- 
taken landlord, he behaved with prudent resolution, not 
like a vain braggart but like a practically brave man. It 
was I that innocently (by my settlement at Hoddam Hill) 
had involved him in it. I must admire now his silence, 
while we were all so loud and vituperative. He spoke 
nothing in that matter except only what had practical 
4 



50 JAMES CARLYLE. 

meaning in it, and in a practical tone. His answers to un- 
just proposals meanwhile were resolute as ever, memor- 
able for their emphasis. ** I will not do it," said he once ; 
" I will rather go to Jerusalem seeking farms and die with- 
out finding one. " " We- can live without Sharpe," said he 
once in my hearing (such a thing, only once) "and the 
whole Sharpe creation." On getting to Scotsbrig, the 
rest of us all triumphed — not he. He let the matter stand 
on its own feet ; was there also not to talk, but to work. 
He even addressed a conciliatory letter to General Sharpe 
(which I saw right to write for him, since he judged pru- 
dence better than pride), but it produced no result except 
indeed the ascertainment that none could be produced 
which itself was one. 

When he first entered our house at Craigenputtoch, 
he said in his slow emphatic way, with a certain rustic 
dignity to my wife (I had entered without introducing 
him), " I am grown an old fellow'' (never can we forget 
the pathetic slow earnestness of these two words) ; *' I 
am grown an old fellow ^ and wished to see ye all once 
more while I had opportunity." Jane ' was greatly struck 
with him, and still farther opened my eyes to the treasure 
I possessed in a father. 

The last thing I gave him was a cake of Cavendish 
tobacco sent down by Alick about this time twelvemonth. 
Through life I had given him very little, having little to 
give. He needed little, and from me expected nothing. 
Thou who wouldst give, give quickly. In the grave thy 
loved one can receive no kindness. I once bought him a 

' Miss Jane Welsh, whom Carlyle married. 



JAMES CARLYLE. 5 1 

pair of silver spectacles, of the receipt of which and the 
letter that accompanied them (John told me) he was very 
glad, and nigh weeping. " What I gave I have." He 
read with these spectacles till his last days, and no doubt 
sometimes thought of me in using them. 

The last time I saw him was about the first of August 
last, a few days before departing hither. He was very 
kind, seemed prouder of me than ever. What he had 
never done the hke of before, he said, on hearing me ex- 
press something which he admired, ** Man, it's surely a 
pity that thou shouldst sit yonder with nothing but the 
eye of Omniscience to see thee, and thou with such a gift 
to speak." His eyes were sparkling mildly, with a kind 
of dehberate joy. Strangely too he offered me on one 
of those mornings (knowing that I was poor) **two 
sovereigns " Vv^hich he had of his own, and pressed them 
on my acceptance. They were lying in his desk ; none 
knew of them. He seemed really anxious and desirous 
that I should take them, should take his little hoard, his 
all that he had to give. I said jokingly afterwards that 
surely he was FEY. So it has proved. 

I shall now no more behold my dear father with these 
bodily eyes. With him a whole threescore and ten years 
of the past has doubly died for me. It is as if a new leaf 
in the great book of time were turned over. Strange 
time — endless time ; or of which I see neither end nor 
beginning. All rushes on. Man follows man. His life 
is as a tale that has been told ; yet under Time does there 
not lie Eternity ? Perhaps my father, all that essentially 
was my father, is even now near me, with me. Both he 



52 JAMES CARLYLE. 

and I are with God. Perhaps, if it so please God, we 
shall in some higher state of being meet one another, 
recognise one another. As it is written, We shall be for 
ever with God. The possibility, nay (in some way) the 
certainty of perennial existence daily grows plainer to 
me. " The essence of whatever was, is, or shall be, even 
now is." God is great. God is good. His will be done, 
for it will be right. 

As it is, I can think peaceably of the departed loved. 
All that was earthly, harsh, sinful in our relation has 
fallen away ; all that was holy in it remains. I can see 
my dear father's life in some measure as the sunk pillar 
on which mine was to rise and be built ; the waters of 
time have now swelled up round his (as they will round 
mine) ; I can see it all transfigured, though I touch it no 
longer. I might almost say his spirit seems to have 
entered into me (so clearly do I discern and love him) ; I 
seem to myself only the continuation and second volume 
of my father. These days that I have spent thinking of 
him and of his end, are the peaceablest, the only Sabbath 
that I have had in London. One other of the universal 
destinies of man has overtaken me. Thank Heaven, I 
know and have known what it is to be a son ; to love a 
father, as spirit can love spirit. God give me to live to 
my father's honour and to His. And now, beloved 
father, farewell for the last time in this world of shadows ! 
In the world of realities may the Great Father again 
bring us together in perfect holiness and perfect love ! 
Amen ! 

Sunday night, Jan. 29, 1832. 



EDWARD IRVING. 



EDWARD IRVING. 

Cheyne Row, Autumn 1866. 

Edward Irving died thirty-two years ago (December 
1834) in the first months of our adventurous settlement 
here. The memory of him is still clear and vivid with 
me in all points : that of his first and only visit to us in 
this house, in this room, just before leaving for Glasgow 
(October 1834), which was the last we saw of him, is still 
as fresh as if it had been yesterday ; and he has a solemn, 
massive, sad and even pitiable though not much blama- 
ble, or in heart even blamable, and to me always dear 
and most friendly aspect, in those vacant kingdoms of 
the past. He was scornfully forgotten at the time of his 
death, having, indeed, sunk a good while before out of 
the notice of the more intelligent classes. There has since 
been and now is, in the new theological generation, a kind 
of revival of him, on rather weak and questionable terms, 
sentimental mainly, and grounded on no really correct 
knowlecfge or insight. Which, however, seems to be- 
speak some continuance of by-gone remembrances for a 
good while yet, by that class of people and the many that 
hang by them. Being very solitary, and, except for con- 
verse with the spirits of my vanished ones, very idle in 
these hours and days, I have bethought me of throwing 



56 EDWARD IRVING. 

down (the more rapidly the better) something of my rec- 
ollections of this, to me, very memorable man, in hopes 
they may by possibility be worth something by-and-by 
to some — not worth less than nothing to anybody (viz. 
not true and candid according to my best thoughts) if I 
can help it. 

The Irvings, Edward's father and uncles, lived all 
within a few miles of my native place, and were of my 
father's acquaintance. Two of the uncles, whose little 
farm establishments lay close upon Ecclefechan, were of 
his familiars, and became mine more or less, especially 
one of them (George, of Bogside), who was further a co-re- 
ligionist of ours (a " Burgher Seceder," not a " Kirkman," 
as the other was). They were all cheerfully quietj rational, 
and honest people, of good-natured and prudent turn. 
Something of what might be called a kindly vanity, a very 
harmless self-esteem, doing pleasure to the proprietor and 
hurt to nobody else, was traceable in all of them. They 
were not distinguished by intellect, any of them, except it 
might be intellect in the unconscious or instinctive condi- 
tion (coming out as prudence of conduct, etc.), of which 
there were good indications ; and of Uncle George, who 
was prudent enough, and successfully diligent in his affairs 
(no bad proof of '* intellect " in some shape) though other- 
wise a most taciturn, dull, and almost stupid-looking man, 
I remember this other fact, that he had one of the largest 
heads in the district, and that my father, he, and a clever 
and original Dr. Little, their neighbour, never could be 
fitted in a hat shop in the village, but had always to send 
their measure to Dumfries to a hat-maker there. Whether 



EDWARD IRVING. 57 

George had a round head or a long, I don't recollect. 
There was a fine little spice of innocent, faint, but genuine 
and kindly banter in him now and then. Otherwise I 
recollect him only as heavy, hebetated, elderly or old, and 
more inclined to quiescence and silence than to talk of or 
care about anything exterior to his own interests, tem- 
poral or spiritual. 

Gavin, Edward's father (name pronounced Gayin=: 
Guyon, as Edward once remarked to me), a tallish man 
of rugged countenance, which broke out oftenest into 
some innocent fleer of merriment, or readiness to be merry 
when you addressed him, was a prudent, honest-hearted, 
rational person, but made no pretension to superior gifts 
of mind, though he too, perhaps, may have had such in 
its undeveloped form. Thus, on ending his apprentice- 
ship, or by some other lucky opportunity, he had formed 
a determination of seeing a little of England in the first 
place, and actually got mounted on a stout pony, accou- 
trements succinctly complete (road money in a belt round 
his own body), and rode and wandered at his will deliber- 
ate southward, I think, for about six weeks, as far as 
Wiltshire at least, for I have heard him speak of Devizes, 
•' The Devizes " he called it, as one of his halting places. 
What his precise amount of profit from this was I know 
not at all, but it bespeaks something ingenuous and adven- 
turous in the young man. He was by craft a tanner, had 
settled in Annan, soon began to be prosperous, wedded 
well, and continued all his life there. He was among the 
younger of these brothers, but was clearly the head of 
them, and, indeed, had been the making of the principal 



58 EDWARD IRVING. 

two, George and John, whom we knew. Gavin was bail- 
lie in Annan when the furious election sung by Burns 
("There were five carlins in the south" — five burghs, 
namely) took place. Gavin voted the right way (Duke 
of Queensberry's way) and got for his two brothers 
each the lease of a snug Queensberry farm, which grew 
even the snugger as dissolute old Queensberry devel- 
oped himself more and more into a cynical egoist, sen- 
suahst, and hater of his next heir (the Buccleuch, not a 
Douglas, but a Scott, who now holds both dukedoms) a 
story well known over Scotland, and of altogether lively 
interest in Annandale (where it meant entail-leases and 
large sums of money) during several years of my youth. 

These people, the Queensberry farmers, seem to me to 
have been the happiest set of yeomen I ever came to see, 
not only because they sate easy as to rent, but because 
they knew fully how to sit so, and were pious, modest, 
thrifty men, who neither fell into laggard relaxation of 
diligence or were stung by any madness of ambition, but 
faithfully continued to turn all their bits of worldly suc- 
cess into real profit for soul and body. They disappeared 
(in Chancery lawsuit) fifty years ago. I have seen vari- 
ous kinds of farmers, scientific, etc., etc., but as desirable 
a set not since. 

Gavin had married well, perhaps rather above his rank, 
a tall, black-eyed, handsome woman, sister of certain Low- 
thers in that neighbourhood, who did most of the incon- 
siderable corn trade of those parts, and were considered 
a stiff-necked, faithful kind of people, apter to do than to 
speak, originally from Cumberland, I beheve. For her 



EDWARD IRVING. 59 

own share the mother of Edward Irving had much of 
fluent speech in her, and of management ; thrifty, assidu- 
ous, wise, if somewhat fussy ; for the rest, an excellent 
house mother I believe, full of affection and tender anxi- 
ety for her children and husband. By degrees she had 
developed the modest prosperity of her household into 
something of decidedly ''genteel" (Annan "gentility"), 
and having left the rest of the Irving kindred to their rus- 
tic solidities, had probably but Httle practical familiarity 
with most of them, though never any quarrel or estrange- 
ment that I heard of. Her Gavin was never careful of 
gentility ; a roomy simplicity and freedom (as of a man in 
a dressing-gown) his chief aim. In my time he seemed 
mostly to lounge about ; superintended his tanning only 
from afar, and at length gave it up altogether. There 
were four other brothers, three of them small farmers, and 
a fourth who followed some cattle traffic in Annan, and 
was well esteemed there for his honest simple ways. No 
sister of theirs did I ever hear of; nor what their father 
had been ; some honest little farmer, he too, I conclude. 
Their mother, Edward Irving's aged grandmother, I 
well remember to have seen ; once, perhaps twice, at her 
son George's fireside ; a good old woman, half in dotage, 
and the only creature I ever saw spinning with a distaff 
and no other apparatus but tow or- wool. All these Ir- 
vings were of blond or even red complexion — red hair a 
prevailing or sole colour in several of their families. 
Gavin himself was reddish, or at least sandy blond ; but 
all his children had beautifully coal-black hair, except one 
girl, the youngest of the set but two, who was carroty 



Co EDWARD IRVING. 

like her cousins. The brunette mother with her swift 
black eyes had prevailed so far. Enough now for the 
genealogy — superabundantly enough. 

One of the circumstances of Irving's boyhood ought 
not to be neglected by his biographer — the remarkable 
schoolmaster he had. '* Old Adam Hope," perhaps not 
yet fifty in Irving's time, was all along a notability in 
Annan. 

What had been his specific history or employment be- 
fore this of schoolmastering I do not know, nor was he 
ever my schoolmaster except incidentally for a few weeks, 
once or twice, as substitute for some absentee who had 
the office. But I can remember on one such occasion 
reading in Sallust with him, and how he read it and 
drilled us in it ; and I have often enough seen him teach, 
and knew him well enough. A strong-built, bony, but 
lean kind of man, of brown complexion, and a pair of the 
sharpest, not the sweetest, black eyes. Walked in a loung- 
ing, stooping figure ; in the street broad-brimmed and in 
clean frugal rustic clothes ; in his schoolroom bare-headed, 
hands usually crossed over back, and with his eftective 
leather strap ('* cat " as he called it, not tawse, for it was 
not slit at all) hanging ready over his thumb if requisite 
anywhere. In my time he had a couple of his front teeth 
quite black, which was very visible, as his mouth usually 
wore a settled humanly contemptuous grin. " Nothing 
good to be expected from you or from those you came 
of, ye little whelps, but we must get from you the best 
you have, and not complain of anything." This was what 
the grin seemed to say ; but the black teeth {jet-blacky for 



EDWARD IRVING. 6 1 

he chewed tobacco also to a slight extent, never spitting) 
were always mysterious to me, till at length I found they 
were of cork, the product of Adam's frugal penknife, and 
could be removed at pleasure. He was a man humanly 
contemptuous of the world, and valued " suffrages " at a 
most low figure in comparison. I should judge an ex- 
tremely proud man ; for the rest an inexorable logician, a 
Calvinist at all points, and Burgher Scotch Seceder to the 
backbone. He had written a tiny English grammar lat- 
terly (after Irving's time and before mine) which was a 
very compact, lucid, and complete little piece ; and was 
regarded by the natives, especially the young natives 
who had to learn from it, with a certain awe, the feat of 
authorship in print being then somewhat stupendous and 
beyond example in those parts. He did not know very 
much, though still a good something ; Geometry (of 
Euchd), Latin, arithmetic, English Syntax. But what he 
did profess or imagine himself to know, he knew in every 
fibre, and to the very bottom. More rigorously sohd 
teacher of the young idea, so far as he could carry it, 
you might have searched for through the world in vain. 
Self-delusion, half-knowledge, sham instead of reality, 
could not get existed in his presence. He had a Socratic 
way with him ; would accept the hopeless pupil's half- 
knowledge, or plausible sham of knowledge, with a kind 
of welcome. '' Hm ! km I yes ; " and then gently enough 
begin a chain of enquiries more and more surprising to 
the poor pupil, till he had reduced him to zero — to mere 
non phis ultra^ and the dismal perception that his sham 
of knowledge had been flat misknowledge, with a spice 



62 EDWARD IRVING. 

of dishonesty added. This was what he called ''making 
a boy fast." For the poor boy had to sit in his place 
under arrest all day or day after day, meditating those 
dismal new-revealed facts, and beating ineffectually his 
poor brains for some solution of the mystery and feasible 
road out. He might apply again at pleasure. '' I have 
made it out, sir." But if again found self-deluded, it was 
only a new padlock to those fastenings of his. They 
were very miserable to the poor penitent, or impenitent, 
wretch. 

I remember my father once describing to us a call he 
had made on Hope during the mid-day hour of interval, 
whom he found reading or writing something, not having 
cared to lock the door and to go home, with three or four 
bits of boys sitting prisoners, *' made fast " in different 
parts of the room ; all perfectly miserable, each with a 
rim of black worked out round his eye-sockets (the effect 
of salt tears wiped by knuckles rather dirty). Adam, 
though not cat-like of temper or intention, had a kind of 
cat-pleasure in surveying and playing with these captive 
mice. He was a praise and glory to well-doing boys, a 
beneficent terror to the ill-doing or dishonest blockhead 
sort ; and did what was in his power to edtcce (or educate) 
and make available the net amount of faculty discoverable 
in each, and separate firmly the known from the unknown 
or misknown in those young heads. On Irving, who 
always spoke of him with mirthful affection, he had pro- 
duced quietly not a little effect ; prepared him well for his 
triumphs in geometry and Latin at college, and through 
life you could always notice, overhung by such strange 



EDWARD IRVING. 63 

draperies and huge superstructures so foreign to it, some- 
thing of that primaeval basis of rigorous logic and clear 
articulation laid for him in boyhood by old Adam Hope. 
Old Adam, indeed, if you know the Annanites and him, 
will be curiously found visible there to this day ;*an argu- 
mentative, clear-headed, sound-hearted, if rather conceited 
and contentious set of people, more given to intellectual 
pursuits than some of their neighbours. I consider Adam 
an original meritorious kind of man, and regret to think 
that his sphere was so limited. In my youngest years his 
brown, quietly severe face was familiar to me in Eccle- 
fechan Meeting-house (my venerable Mr. Johnston's hear- 
ers on Sundays, as will be afterwards noted). Younger 
cousins of his, excellent honest people, I have since met 
(David Hope, merchant in Glasgow ; William Hope, 
scholar in Edinburgh, etc.); and one tall, straight old 
uncle of his, very clean always, brown as mahogany and 
with a head white as snow, I remember very clearly as 
the picture of gravity and pious seriousness in that poor 
Ecclefechan place of worship, concerning whom I will re- 
port one anecdote and so end. Old David Hope — that 
was his name — lived on a little farm close by Solway 
shore a mile or two east of Annan. A wet country, with 
late harvests ; which (as in this year 1866) are sometimes 
incredibly difficult to save. Ten days continuously pour- 
ing ; then a day, perhaps two days, of drought, part of 
them it may be of roaring wind — during which the mo- 
ments are golden for you, and perhaps you had better 
work all night, as presently there will be deluges again. 
David's stuff, one such morning, was all standing dry 



64 EDWARD IRVING. 

again, ready to be saved still, if he stood to it, which was 
much his intention. Breakfast (wholesome hasty por- 
ridge) was soon over, and next in course came family wor- 
ship, what they call taking the Book (or Books, i.e. taking 
your Bible, Psalm and chapter always part of the service). 
David was putting on his spectacles when somebody 
rushed in. " Such a raging wind risen as will drive the 
stooks (shocks) into the sea if let alone." " Wind ! " an- 
swered David, " wind canna get ae straw that has been 
appointed mine. Sit down and let us worship God" (that 
rides in the whirlwind) ! There is a kind of citizen which 
Britain used to have, very different from the millionaire 
Hebrews, Rothschild money-changers, Demosthenes Dis- 
raelis, and inspired young Goschens and their " unex- 
ampled prosperity." Weep, Britain, if the latter are 
among the honourable you now have ! 

One other circumstance that peculiarly deserves notice 
in Irving's young life, and perhaps the only other one, is 
also connected with Adam Hope — Irving's young reli- 
giorr. Annandale was not an irreligious country, though 
Annan itself (owing to a drunken clergyman and the logi- 
cal habits they cultivated) was more given to sceptical 
free-thinking than other places. The greatly prevailing 
fashion was a decent form of devoutness, and pious theo- 
retically anxious regard for things sacred, in all which the 
Irving household stood fairly on a level with its neigh- 
bours, or perhaps above most of them. They went duly 
to Kirk, strove still to tolerate and almost to respect their 
unfortunate minister (who had succeeded a father greatly 
esteemed in that office, and was a man of gifts himself, 



EDWARD IRVING. 65 

and of much goodnature, though so far gone astray). 
Nothing of profane, or of the least tendency that way, was 
usually seen, or would have been suffered without protest 
,and grave rebuke in Irving's environment, near or remote. 
At the same time this other fact was visible enough if you 
examined. A man who awoke to the belief that he actu- 
ally had a soul to be saved or lost was apt to be found 
among the Dissenting people, and to have given up attend- 
ance on the Kirk. It was ungenteel for him to attend 
the meeting-house, but he found it to be altogether salu- 
tary. This was the case throughout in Irving's district 
and mine. As I had remarked for myself, nobody teach- 
ing me, at an early period of my investigations into men 
and things, I concluded it would be generally so over 
Scotland, but found when I went north to Edinburgh, 
Glasgow, Fife, etc., that it was not, or by no means so 
perceptibly was. For the rest, all Dissent in Scotland is 
merely a stricter adherence to the National Kirk in all 
points ; and the then Dissenterage is definable to moderns 
simply as a ^^ Free Kirk, making no noise.'' It had quiet- 
ly (about 1760), after much haggle and remonstrance, 
** seceded," or walked out of its stipends, officialities, and 
dignities, greatly to the mute sorrow of religious Scot- 
land, and was still, in a strict manner, on the united 
voluntary principle, preaching to the people what of best 
and sacredest it could. Not that there was not some- 
thing of rigour, of severity, a lean-minded controversial 
spirit, among certain brethren, mostly of the laity, I 
think ; narrow nebs (narrow of neb, i.e. of nose or bill) as 
the outsiders called them ; of flowerage, or free harmoni- 
5 



66 EDWARD IRVING. 

ous beauty, there could not well be much in this system. 
But really, except on stated occasions (annual fast-day for 
instance, when you were reminded that ** a testimony had 
been lifted up," of which j/^2/5 were now the bearers) there 
was little, almost no talk, especially no preaching at all, 
about *' patronage," or secular controversy, but all turned 
on the weightier and universal matters of the law, and was 
considerably entitled to say for itself, ** Hear, all men." 
Very venerable are those old Seceder clergy to me now 
when I look back on them. Most of the chief figures 
among them in Irving's time and mine were hoary old 
men ; men so like what one might call antique Evange- 
lists in ruder vesture, and ''poor scholars and gentlemen 
of Christ," I have nowhere met with in monasteries or 
churches, among Protestant or Papal clergy, in any 
country of the world. All this is altered utterly at pres- 
ent, I grieve to say, and gone to as good as nothing or 
worse. It began to alter just about that very period, on 
the death of those old hoary heads, and has gone on with 
increasing velocity ever since. Irving and I were proba- 
bly among the last products it delivered before gliding 
off, and then rushing off into self-consciousness, arro- 
gancy, insincerity, jangle, and vulgarity, which I fear are 
now very much the definition of it. Irving's concern 
with the matter had been as follows, brief, but, I believe, 
ineffaceable through life. 

Adam Hope was a rigid Seceder, as all his kin and 
connections were ; and in and about Annan, equally rigid 
some of them, less rigid others, were a considerable num- 
ber of such, who indeed some few years hence combined 



EDWARD IRVING. 6/ 

themselves into an Annan Burgher congregation, and set 
up a meeting-house and minister of their own. For the 
present they had none, nor had thought of such a thing. 
Venerable Mr. Johnston of Ecclefechan, six miles off, was 
their only minister, and to him duly on Sunday Adam and 
a select group Avere in the habit of pilgriming for sermon. 
Less zealous brethren would perhaps pretermit in bad 
weather, but I suppose it had to be very bad when Adam 
and most of his group failed to appear. The distance — 
six miles twice — was nothing singular in this case ; one 
family, whose streaming plaids, hung up to drip, I re- 
member to have noticed one wet Sunday, pious Scotch 
weavers settled near Carlisle, I was told, were in the habit 
of walking fifteen miles twice for their sermon, since it was 
not to be had nearer. A curious phasis of things, quite 
vanished now, with whatever of divinity and good was in 
it, and whatever of merely human and not so good. 
From reflection of his own, aided or perhaps awakened 
by study of Adam Hope and his example (for I think 
there could not be direct speech or persuasion from Adam 
in such a matter) the boy Edward joined himself to 
Adam's pilgriming group, and regularly trotted by their 
side to Ecclefechan for sermon-listening, and occasionally 
joining in their pious discourse thither and back. He 
might be then in his tenth year ; distinguished hitherto, 
both his elder brother John and he, by their wild love of 
sport as well as readiness in school lessons. John had 
quite refused this Ecclefechan adventure. And no doubt 
done what he could to prevent it, for father and mother 
looked on it likewise with dubious or disapproving eyes ; 



68 EDWARD IRVING. 

'• Why run into these ultra courses, sirrah ? " and Edward 
had no furtherance in it except from within. How long 
he persisted I do not know, possibly a year or two, or oc- 
casionally, almost till he went to college. I have heard 
him speak of the thing long afterwards in a genially mirth- 
ful way ; well recognising what a fantastic, pitifully pe- 
dantic, and serio-ridiculous set these road companions of 
his mostly were. I myself remember two of them who 
were by no means heroic to me. *' Willie Drummond," 
a little man with mournful goggle eyes, a tailor I almost 
think, and ''Joe ^lacklock " (Blai-lock) a rickety stock- 
ing-weaver, with protruding chin and one leg too short 
foe the other short one, who seemed to me an abundantly 
solemn and much too infallible and captious little fellow. 
Edward threw me off with gusto outline likenesses of 
these among the others, and we laughed heartily without 
malice. Edward's religion in after years, though it ran 
always in the blood and life of him, was never shrieky or 
narrow ; but even in his last times, with their miserable 
troubles and confusions, spoke always with a sonorous 
deep tone, like the voice of a man frank and sincere ad- 
dressing men. To the last or almost to the last I could 
occasionally raise a genial old Annandale laugh out of him 
which is now pathetic to me to remember. 

I will say no more of Irving's boyhood. He must 
have sat often enough in Ecclefechan meeting-house 
along with me, but I never noticed or knew, and had not 
indeed heard of him till I went to Annan School (1806 ; 
a new '' Academy " forsooth, with Adam Hope for '' Eng- 
lish master,"), and Irving perhaps two years before had 



EDWARD IRVING. 69 

left for college. I must bid adieu also to that poor temple 
of my childhood, to me more sacred at this moment than 
perhaps the biggest cathedral then extant could have 
been ; rude, rustic, bare — no temple in the world was 
more so — but there were sacred lambencies, tongues of 
authentic flame from heaven which kindled w^hat was best 
in one, what has not yet gone out. Strangely vivid to me 
some twelve or twenty of those old faces whom I used to 
see every Sunday, whose names, employments, precise 
dwelling-places I never knew, but whose portraits are yet 
clear to me as a mirror — their heavy-laden, patient, ever- 
attentive faces. Fallen solitary most of them. Children 
all away, wife away forever, or it might be wife still 
there (one such case I well remember) constant like a 
shadow and grown very like her old man — the thrifty, 
cleanly poverty of these good people, their well-saved old 
coarse clothes (tailed waistcoats down to mid-thigh, a 
fashion quite dead twenty years before) ; all this I occa- 
sionally see as with eyes sixty or sixty-five years off, and 
hear the very voice of my mother upon it when some- 
times I would be questioning about the persons of the 
drama and endeavouring to describe and identify them to 
her for that purpose. Oh, ever-miraculous time ! O 
death ! O life ! 

Probably it was in 1808, April or May, after college 
time, that I first saw Irving. I had got over my worst 
miseries in that doleful and hateful "Academy" life of 
mine (which lasted three years in all) ; had begun, in spite 
of precept, to strike about me, to defend myself by hand 
and voice ; had made some comradeship with one or two 



70 EDWARD IRVING. 

of my own age, and was reasonably becoming alive in the 
place and its interests. I remember to have felt some 
human curiosity and satisfaction when the noted Edward 
Irving, English Mr. Hope escorting — introduced himself 
in our Latin class-room one bright forenoon. Hope was 
essentially the introducer ; this was our rector's class- 
room. Irving's visit to the school had been specially to 
Adam Hope, his own old teacher, who now brought him 
down nothing loth. Perhaps our Mathematics gentleman, 
one Morley (an excellent Cumberland man, whom I loved 
much and who taught me well) had also stept in in honour 
of such a stranger. The road from Adam's room to ours 
lay through Mr. Morley's. Ours was a big airy room 
lighted from both sides, desks and benches occupying 
scarcely the smaller half of the floor, better half belonged 
to the rector, and to the classes he called up from time to 
time. It was altogether vacant at that moment, and the 
interview perhaps often to fifteen minutes transacted itself 
in a standing posture there. We were all of us attentive 
with eye and ear, or as attentive as we durst be, while by 
theory " preparing our lessons." Irving was scrupulously 
dressed ; black coat, ditto tight pantaloons in the fashion 
of the day ; clerically black his prevailing hue ; and 
looked very neat, self-possessed, and enviable. A flour- 
ishing slip of a youth, with coal-black hair, swarthy clear 
complexion, very straight on his feet, and except for the 
glaring squint alone, decidedly handsome. We didn't 
hear everything ; indeed we heard nothing that was of 
the least moment or worth remembering. Gathered in 
general that the talk was all about Edinburgh, of this pro- 



EDWARD IRVING. /I 

fessor and of that, and their merits and method (** won- 
derful wo|Pi up yonder, and this fellow has been in it 
and can talk of it in that easy cool way.") The last pro- 
fessor touched upon, I think, must have been mathe- 
matical Leslie (at that time totally non-extant to me), 
for the one particular I clearly recollect was something 
from Irving about new doctrines by somebody (doubt- 
less Leslie) " concerning the circle," which last word he 
pronounced "circul" with a certain preciosity which 
was noticeable slightly in other parts of his behaviour. 
Shortly after this of *' circul," he courteously (had been 
very courteous all the time, and unassuming in the main,) 
made his bow, and the interview melted instantly away. 
For years I don't remember to have seen Irving's face 
again. 

Seven years come and gone. It was now the winter 
of 1 815. I had myself been in Edinburgh College, and 
above a year ago had duly quitted it. Had got (by com- 
petition at Dumfries, summer 1814) to be '* mathematical 
master " in Annan Academy, with some potential outlook 
on divinity as ultimatum (a rural divinity student visiting 
Edinburgh for a few days each year, and *' delivering" 
certain *' discourses "). Six years of that would bring you 
to the church gate, as four years of continuous " divinity 
hall " would ; unlucky only that in my case I had never 
had the least enthusiasm for the business (and there were 
even grave prohibitive doubts more and more rising 
ahead) : both branches of my situation flatly contradic- 
tory to all ideals or wishes of mine, especially the Annan 
one, as the closely actual and the daily and hourly press- 



72 EDWARD IRVING. 

ing on me, while the other lay theoretic, still well ahead, 
and perhaps avoidable. One attraction — one only — there 
was in my Annan business. I was supporting myself, even 
saving some few pounds of my poor 60/. or 70/. annually, 
against a rainy day, and not a burden to my ever-gener- 
ous father any more. But in all other points of view I 
was abundantly lonesome, uncomfortable, and out of 
place there. Didn't go and visit the people there. (Ought 
to have pushed myself in a little silently, and sought invi- 
tations. Such their form of special pohteness, which I 
was far too shy and proud to be able for.) Had the char- 
acter of morose dissociableness ; in short, thoroughly de- 
tested my function and position, though understood to be 
honestly doing the duties of it, and held for solacement 
and company to the few books I could command, and an 
accidental friend I had in the neighbourhood (Mr. Cherch 
and his wife, of Hitchill ; Rev. Henry Duncan, of Ruth- 
well, and ditto. These were the two bright and brightest 
houses for me. My thanks to them, now and always). 
As to my schoolmaster function, it was never said I mis- 
did it much ; a clear and correct expositor and enforcer. 
But from the first, especially with such adjuncts, I dis- 
liked it, and by swift degrees grew to hate it more and 
more. Some four years in all I had of it ; two in Annan, 
two in Kirkcaldy under much improved social accompani- 
ments. And at the end my solitary desperate conclusion 
was fixed : that 1, for my own part, would prefer to per- 
ish in the ditch, if necessary, rather than continue living 
by such a trade, and peremptorily gave it up accordingly. 
This long preface will serve to explain the small passage 



EDWARD IRVING. 73 

of collision that occurred between Irving and me on our 
first meeting in this world. 

I had heard much of Irving all along ; how distin- 
guished in studies, how splendidly successful as teacher, 
how two professors had sent him out to Haddington, and 
how his new Academy and new methods were illuminat- 
ing and astonishing everything there. (Alas ! there was 
one little pupil he had there, with her prettiest Uttlepemia 
peiincB from under the table, and let me be a boy too, 
papa ! who was to be of endless moment, and who alone 
was of any moment to me in all that!) I don't remem- 
ber any malicious envy whatever towards this great Irving 
of the distance. For his greatness in study and learning I 
certainly might have had a tendency, hadn't I struggled 
against it, and tried to make it emulation : '* Do the like, 
do thou the like under difficulties ! " As to his school- 
master success, I cared little about that, and easily Hung 
that out when it came across me. But naturally all this 
betrumpeting of Irving to me (in which I could sometimes 
trace some touch of malice to myselfj, had not awakened 
in me any love towards this victorious man. " Ich 
gonnte Ihn," as the Germans phrase it ; but, in all strict- 
ness, nothing more. 

About Christmas time (1815) I had gone with great 
pleasure to see Edinburgh again, and read in Divinity 
Hall a Latin discourse — "exegesis" they call it there — 
on the question, '* Num deticr religio natttralis f " It was 
the second, and proved to be the last, of my performances 
on that treatise. My first, an English sermon on the 
words, ''Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now" 



74 EDWARD IRVING. 

etc., etc., a very weak, flowery, and sentimental piece, had 
been achieved in 1814, a few months after my leaving for 
Annan. Piece second, too, I suppose, was weak enough, 
but I still remember the kind of innocent satisfaction I 
had in turning it into Latin in my solitude, and my slight 
and momentary (by no means deep or sincere) sense of 
pleasure in the bits of compliments and flimsy approba- 
tion from comrades and professors on both these occa- 
sions. Before Christmas Day I had got rid of my exege- 
sis, and had still a week of holiday ahead for old acquaint- 
ances and Edinburgh things, which was the real charm of 
my offlcial errand thither. 

One night I had gone over to Rose Street to a certain 
Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Waugh's, there, who was a kind of 
maternal cousin or half-cousin of my own. Had been my 
school comrade; several years older; item: my prede- 
cessor in the Annan *' mathematical mastership;" im- 
mediate successor he of Morley, and a great favourite 
in Annan society in comparison Avith some ; and who, 
though not without gifts, proved gradually to be intrinsi- 
cally a fool, and by his insolvencies and confused futilities 
as doctor there in his native place, has left a kind of re- 
membrance, ludicrous, partly contemptuous, though not 
without kindliness too, and even something of respect. 
His father, with whom I had been boarded while a scholar 
at Annan, was one of the most respectable and yet laugh- 
able of mankind ; a ludicrous caricature of originality, 
honesty, and faithful discernment and practice — all in the 
awkward form. Took much care of his money, however, 
which this, his only son, had now inherited, and did not 



EDWARD IRVING. 75 

keep very long. Of Waugh senior, and even of Waugh 
junior, there might be considerable gossiping and quizzi- 
cal detailing. They failed not to rise now and then, 
especially Waugh senior did not, between Irving and 
me, always with hearty ha-ha's, and the finest recognition 
on Irving's part when we came to be companions after- 
wards. But whither am I running with so interminable 
a preface to one of the smallest incidents conceivable ? 

I was sitting in Waugh junior's that evening, not too 
vigorously conversing, when Waugh's door went open, 
and there stept in Irving, and one Nichol, a mathematical 
teacher in Edinburgh, an intimate of his, a shrewd, merry, 
and very social kind of person, whom I did not then know, 
except by name. Irving was over, doubtless from Kirk- 
caldy, on his holidays, and had probably been dining 
with Nichol. The party was to myself not unwelcome, 
though somewhat alarming. Nichol, I perceived, might 
be by some three or four years the eldest of us ; a sharp 
man, with mouth rather quizzically close. I was by some 
three or four years the youngest ; and here was Trisme- 
gistus Irving, a victorious bashaw, while poor I was so 
much the reverse. The conversation in a minute or two 
became quite special, and my unwilling self the centre of 
it ; Irving directing upon me a whole series of questions 
about Annan matters, social or domestic mostly ; of 
which I knew little, and had less than no wish to speak, 
though I strove politely to answer succinctly what I 
could. In the good Irving all this was very natural, nor 
was there in him, I am well sure, the slightest notion to 
hurt me or be tyrannous to me. Far the reverse his 



'j6 EDWARD IRVING. 

mood at all times towards all men. But there was, I 
conjecture, something of conscious unquestionable supe- 
riority, of careless natural de haict en bas which fretted 
on me, and might be rendering my answers more and 
more and more succinct. Nay, my small knowledge was^ 
failing; and I had more than once on certain points, as 

"Has Mrs. got a baby? is it son or daughter?" 

and the like, answered candidly, " I dont know." 

I think three or two such answers to such questions 
had followed in succession, when Irving, feeling uneasy, 
and in a dim manner that the game was going wrong, 
answered in gruffish yet not illnatured tone, "You seem 
to know nothing ! " To which I with prompt emphasis, 
somewhat provoked, replied : " Sir, by what right do 
you try my knowledge in this way ? Are you grand 
inquisitor, or have you authority to question people and 
cross-question at discretion ? I have had no interest to 
inform myself about the births in Annan, and care not if 
the process of birth and generation there should cease 
and determine altogether!" "A bad example that," 
cried Nichol, breaking into laughter ; '' that would never 
do for me (a fellow that needs pupils) ; " and laughed 
heartily, joined by Waugh, and perhaps Irving, so that 
the thing passed off more smoothly than might have been 
expected ; though Irving, of course, felt a little hurt, and 
I think did not altogether hide it from me while the inter- 
view still lasted, which was only a short while. This was 
my first meeting with the man whom I had afterwards, 
and very soon, such cause to love. We never spoke of 
this small unpleasant passage of fence, I believe, and 



EDWARD IRVING. 77 

there never was another Hke it between us in the world. 
Irving did not want some due heat of temper, and there 
was a kind of joyous swagger traceable in his manner in 
this prosperous young time ; but the basis of him at all 
times was fine manly sociality, and the richest, truest 
good nature. Very different from the new friend he was 
about picking up. No swagger in this latter, but a want 
of it which was almost still worse. Not sanguine and 
diffusive he, but biliary and intense. " Far too sarcastic 
for a young man," said several in the years now coming. 
Within six or eight months of this, probably about 
the end of July 1816, happened a new meeting with 
Irving. Adam Hope's wife had died of a sudden. I 
went up the second or third evening to testify m^y silent 
condolence with the poor old man. Can still remember 
his gloomy look, speechless, and the thankful pressure of 
his hand. A number of people were there ; among the 
rest, to my surprise, Irving — home on his Kirkcaldy 
holidays — who seemed to be kindly taking a sort of lead 
in the little managements. He conducted worship, I re- 
member, " taking the Book," which was the only fit 
thing he could settle to, and he did it in a free, flowing, 
modest, and altogether appropriate manner, '' prcccnt- 
tJigy or leading off the Psalm too himself, his voice 
melodiously strong, and his tune, " St. Paul's," truly 
sung, which was a new merit in him to me. Quite be- 
yond my own capacities at that time. If I had been in 
doubts about his reception of me, after that of Rose 
Street, Edinburgh, he quickly and for ever ended them 
by a friendliness which, in wider scenes, might have been 



78 EDWARD IRVIXG. 

called chivalrous. At first sight he heartily shook my 
hand, welcomed me as if I had been a valued old ac- 
quaintance, almost a brother, and before my leaving, 
after worship was done, came up to me again, and with 
the frankest tone said : " You are coming to Kirkcaldy 
to look about you in a month or two. You know I am 
there. My house and all that I can do for you is yours : 
two Annandale people must not be strangers in Fife ! '* 
The " doubting Thomas " durst not quite believe all this, 
so chivalrous was it, but felt pleased and relieved by the 
fine and sincere tone of it, and thought to himself, ** Well, 
it would be pretty ! " 

But to understand the full chivalry of Irving, know 
first what my errand to Kirkcaldy now was. 

Several months before this, rumours had come of 
some break-up in Irving's triumphant Kirkcaldy king- 
dom. '* A terribly severe master, isn't he? Brings his 
pupils on amazingly. Yes, truly, but at such an expense 
of cruelty to them. Very proud, too ; no standing of 
him ; "' him, the least cruel of men, but obliged and ex- 
pected to go at high-pressure speed, and no resource left 
but that of spurring on the laggard. In short, a portion, 
perhaps between a third and fourth part, of Irving's Kirk- 
caldy patrons, feeling these griefs, and finding small com- 
fort or result in complaining to Irving, had gradually 
determined to be off from him, and had hit upon a 
resource which they thought would serve. '*Buy off the 
old parish head schoolmaster," they said; "let Hume 
have his 25/. of salary and go, the lazy, effete old crea- 
ture. We will apply again to Professors Christison and 



EDWARD IRVING. 79 

Leslie, the same who sent us Irving, to send us another 
* classical and mathematical ' who can start fair.'* And 
accordingly, by a letter from Christison, who had never 
noticed me while in his class, nor could distinguish me 
from another ^Ir. Irv^ing Carlyle, an older, considerably 
bigger boy, with red hair, wild buck teeth, and scorched 
complexion, and the worst Latinist of all my acquaint- 
ance (so dark was the good professor's class room, phys- 
ically and otherwise i, I learnt, much to my surprise and 
gratification, ** that Professor Leslie had been with him, 
that etc. etc. , as above, and in brief, that I was the nomi- 
nee if I would accept.'* Several letters passed on the 
subject, and it had been settled, shortly before this meet- 
ing with Irving, that I was in my near vacation time — 
end of August — to visit Kirkcaldy, takca personal view 
of everything, and then sa3' yes if I could, as seemed 
likely. 

Thus stood matters when Ir\-ing received me in the 
way described. Xoble, I must sa}', when you put it 
altogether I Room for plenty of the vulgarest peddling 
feelings there was, and there must still have been be- 
tween us, had either of us, especial!}^ had Ir\ang, been of 
pedlar nature. And I can say there could no t»*o 
Kaisers, nor Charlemagne and Barbarossa, had they 
neighboured one another in the empire of Europe, been 
more completely rid of all that sordes, than were we two 
schoolmasters in the burgh of Kirkcaldy. I made my 
visit, August coming, which was full of interest to me. 
Saw St. Andrews, etc. ; saw a fine, frank, wholesome- 
looking people of the burgher grandees ; l^ked Ir\-ing 



So EDWARD IRVING. 

more and more, and settled to return in a couple of 
months " for good," which I may well say it was, thanks 
to Irving principally. 

George Irving, Edward's youngest brother (who died 
in London as M.D., beginning practice about 1833), 
had met me as he returned from his lessons, when IJirs^ 
came along the street of Kirkcaldy on that sunny after- 
noon (August 1 8 16,) and with blithe looks and words had 
pointed out where his brother lived — a biggish, simple 
house on the sands. The z(j/ie?i of my first call there I do 
not now remember, but have still brightly in mind how 
exuberantly good Irving was ; how he took me into his 
hbrary, a rough, littery, but considerable collection— far 
beyond what I had — and said, cheerily flinging out his 
arms, *' Upon all these you have will and waygate," an 
expressive Annandale phrase of the completest welcome, 
which I failed not of using by-and-by. I also recollect 
lodging with him for a night or two nights about that 
time. Bright moonshine ; waves all dancing and glanc- 
ing out of window, and beautifully humming and luUaby- 
ing on that fine long sandy beach, where he and I so 
often walked and communed afterwards. From the first 
we honestly liked one another and grew intimate, nor 
was there ever, while we both lived, any cloud or grudge 
between us, or an interruption of our feelings for a day or 
hour. Blessed conquest of a friend in this world ! That 
was mainly all the wealth I had for five or six years 
coming, and it made my life in Kirkcaldy (i.e. till near 
1819, I think), a happy season in comparison, and a 
genially useful. Youth itself — healthy, well-intending 



EDWARD IRVING. 8 1 

youth — is so full of opulences. I always rather like Kirk- 
caldy to this day. Aiman the reverse rather still when 
its gueuseries come into my head, and my solitary quasi- 
enchanted position among them — unpermitted to kick 
them into the sea. 

Irving's library was of great use to me ; Gibbon, 
Hume, etc. I think I must have read it almost through. 
Inconceivable to me now with what ardour, with what 
greedy velocity, literally above ten times the speed I can 
now make with any book. Gibbon, in particular, I recol- 
lect to have read at the rate of a volume a day (twelve 
volumes in all) ; and I have still a fair recollection of it, 
though seldom looking into it since. It was, of all the 
books, perhaps the most impressive on me in my then 
stage of investigation and state of mind. I by no means 
completely admired Gibbon, perhaps not more than I now 
do ; but his winged sarcasms, so quiet and yet so con- 
clusively transpiercing and killing dead, were often ad- 
mirable potent and illuminative to me. Nor did I fail to 
recognise his great power of investigating, ascertaining, 
grouping, and narrating ; though the latter had always, 
then as now, something of a Drury Lane character, the 
colours strong but coarse, and set off by lights from the 
side scenes. We had books from Edinburgh College 
Library, too. (I remember Ballly's " Histoire de I'As- 
tronomie," ancient and also modern, which considerably 
disappointed me.) On Irving's shelves were the small 
Didot French classics in quantity. With my appetite 
sharp, I must have read of French and English (for 
I don't recollect much classicality, only something of 



82 EDWARD IRVING. 

mathematics in intermittent spasms), a great deal during 
those years. 

Irving himself, I found, was not, nor had been, much 
of a reader ; but he had, with solid ingenuity and judg- 
ment, by some briefer process of his own, fished out cor- 
rectly from many books the substance of what they han- 
dled, and of what conclusions they came to. This he 
possessed, and could produce in an "honest" manner, 
always when occasion came. He delighted to hear me 
give accounts of my reading, which were often enough a 
theme between us, and to me as well a profitable and 
pleasant one. He had gathered by natural sagacity and 
insight, from conversation and enquiry, a great deal of 
practical knowledge and information on things extant 
round him, which was quite defective in me the recluse. 
We never wanted for instructive and pleasant talk while 
together. He had a most hearty, if not very refined, 
sense of the ludicrous ; a broad genial laugh in him al- 
ways ready. His wide just sympathies, his native saga- 
cities, honest-heartedness, and good humour, made him 
the most delightful of companions. Such colloquies and 
such rovings about in bright scenes, in talk or in silence, 
I have never had since. 

The beach of Kirkcaldy in summer twilights, a mile 
of the smoothest sand, with one long wave coming on 
gently, steadily, and breaking in gradual explosion into 
harmless melodious white, at your hand all the way ; the 
break of it rushing along like a mane of foam, beautifully 
sounding and advancing, ran from south to north, from 
the West Burn to Kirkcaldy harbour, through the whole. 



EDWARD IRVING. S>S 

mile's distance. This was a favourite scene, beautiful to 
me still, in the far away. We roved in the woods too, 
sometimes till all was dark. I remember very pleasant 
strolls to Dysart, and once or twice to the caves and 
queer old saltworks of Wemyss. Once, on a mer^.orable 
Saturday, we made a pilgrimage to hear Dr. Chalmers at 
Dunfermline the morrow. It was on the inducting young 
Mr. Chalmers as minister there ; Chalmers minimus, as 
he soon got named. The great Chalmers was still in the 
first flush of his long and always high popularity. '' Let 
us go and hear him once more," said Irving. The sum- 
mer afternoon was beautiful ; beautiful exceedingly our 
solitary walk by Burntisland and the sands and rocks to 
Inverkeithing, where we lodged, still in a touchingly 
beautiful manner (host the schoolmaster, one Douglas 
from Haddington, a clever old acquaintance of Irving's, 
in after years a Radical editor of mark ; whose wife, for 
thrifty order, admiration of her husband, etc. etc., was a 
model and exemplar). Four miles next morning to Dun- 
fermline and its crowded day, Chalmers maximus not 
disappointing ; and the fourteen miles to Kirkcaldy end- 
ing in late darkness, in rain, and thirsty fatigue, which 
were cheerfully borne. 

Another time, military tents were noticed on the Lo- 
mond Hills (on the eastern of the two). " Trigonometri- 
cal survey," said we; " Ramsden's theodolite, and what 
not ; " let us go. And on Saturday we went. Beautiful 
the airy prospect from that eastern Lomond far and wide. 
Five or six tents stood on the top ; one a black-stained 
cooking one, with a heap of coals close by, the rest all 



84 EDWARD IRVING. 

closed and occupants gone, except one other, partly open 
at the eaves, through which you could look in and see a 
big circular mahogany box (which we took to be the the- 
odohte), and a saucy-looking, cold official gentleman dili- 
gently walking for exercise, no observation being possible 
though the day was so bright. No admittance, however. 
Plenty of fine country people had come up, to whom the 
official had been coldly monosyllabic, as to us also he was. 
Polite, with a shade of contempt, and unwilling to let 
himself into speech. Irving had great skill in these cases. 
He remarked — and led us into remarking — courteously 
this and that about the famous Ramsden and his instru- 
ment, about the famous Trigonometrical Survey, and so 
forth, till the official, in a few minutes, had to melt ; in- 
vited us exceptionally in for an actual inspection of his 
theodolite, which we reverently enjoyed, and saw through 
it the signal column, a great broad plank he told us, on 
the top of Ben Lomond, sixty miles off, wavering and 
shivering like a bit of loose tape, so that no observation 
could be had. 

We descended the hill re facta. Were to lodge in 
LesHe with the minister there ; where, possibly enough, 
Irving had engaged to preach for him next day. I re- 
member a sight of Falkland ruined palace, black, sternly 
impressive on me, as we came down ; like a black old bit 
of coffin or **' protrusive shin bone," sticking through from 
the soil of the dead past. The kirk, too, of next day I 
remember, and a certain tragical Countess of Rothes. 
She had been at school in London ; fatherless. In morn- 
ing walk in the Regent's Park she had noticed a young 



EDWARD IRVING. 85 

gardener, had transiently glanced into him, he into her ; 
and had ended by marrying him, to the horror of soci- 
ety, and ultimately of herself, I suppose ; for he seemed 
to be a poor little common-place creature, as he stood 
there beside her. She was now an elderly, a stately 
woman, of resolute look though sHghtly sad, and didn't 
seem to solicit pity. Her I clearly remember, but not 
who preached, or what; and, indeed, both ends of this 
journey are abolished to me as if they had never been. 

Our voyage to Inchkeith one afternoon was again a 
wholly pleasant adventure, though one of the rashest. 
There were three of us ; Irving's assistant the third, a 
hardy, clever kind of man named Donaldson, of Aberdeen 
origin — Professor Christison's nephew — whom I always 
rather liked, but who before long, as he could never burst 
the shell of expert schoolmastering and gerund grinding, 
got parted from me nearly altogether. Our vessel was a 
rowboat belonging to some neighbours ; in fact, a trim 
yawl with two oars in it and a bit of helm, reputed to be 
somewhat crazy and cranky hadn't the weather been so 
fine. Nor was Inchkeith our original aim. Our aim had 
been as follows. A certain Mr. Glen, Burgher minister 
at Annan, with whom I had lately boarded there, and been 
domestically very happy in comparison, had since, after 
very painful and most undeserved treatment from his con- 
gregation, seen himself obHged to quit the barren wasp's 
nest of a thing altogether, and with his wife and young 
family embark on a missionary career, which had been 
his earliest thought, as conscience now reminded him, 
among other considerations. He was a most pure and 



86 EDWARD IRVING. 

excellent man, of correct superior intellect, and of much 
modest piety and amiability. Things were at last all 
ready, and he and his were come to Edinburgh to embark 
for Astrachan ; where, or whereabouts, he continued dili- 
gent and zealous for many years ; and was widely es- 
teemed, not by the missionary classes alone. Irving, as 
well as I, had an affectionate regard for Glen, and on Sat- 
urday eve of Glen's last Sunday in Edinburgh, had come 
across with me to bid his brave wife and him farewell; 
Edinburgh from Saturday afternoon till the last boat on 
Sunday evening. This was every now and then a cheery 
little adventure of ours, always possible again after due 
pause. We found the Glens in an inn in the Grass Mar- 
ket, only the mistress, who was a handsome, brave, and 
cheery-hearted woman, altogether keeping up her spirits. 
I heard Glen preach for the last time, in " Peddie's Meet- 
ing-house," a large, fine place behind Bristo Street — night 
just sinking as he ended, and the tone of his voice betoken- 
ing how full the heart was. At the door of Peddie's house 
I stopped to take leave. Mrs. Glen alone was there for 
me (Glen not to be seen farther). She wore her old bright 
saucily-affectionate smile, fearless, superior to trouble ; 
but, in a moment, as I took her hand and said, '' Fare- 
well, then, good be ever with you," she shot all pale as 
paper, and we parted mournfully without a word more. 
This sudden paleness of the spirited woman stuck in my 
heart like an arrow. All that night and for some three 
days more I had such a bitterness of sorrow as I hardly 
recollect otherwise. " Parting sadder than by death,'" 
thought I, in my foolish inexperience ; " these good peo- 



EDWARD IRVING. 87 

pie are to live, and we are never to behold each other 
more." Strangely, too, after about four days it went 
quite off, and I felt it no more. This was, perhaps, still 
the third day ; at ail events, it was the day of Glen's sail- 
ing for St. Petersburg, while Irving and I went watching 
from Kirkcaldy sands the Leith ships outward bound, af- 
ternoon sunny, tide ebbing, and settled with ourselves 
which of the big ships was Glen's. "That one surely," 
we said at last; "and it bends so much this way one 
might, by smart rowing, cut into it, and have still a word 
with the poor Glens." Of nautical conclusions none could 
be falser, more ignorant, but we instantly set about exe- 
cuting it ; hailed Donaldson, who was somewhere within 
reach, shoved " Robie Greg's " poor green-painted, rickety 
yawl into the waves (Robie, a good creature who would 
rejoice to have obliged us), and pushed out with our best 
speed to intercept that outward-bound big ship. Irving, 
I think, though the strongest of us, rather preferred the 
helm part then and afterwards, and did not much take the 
oar when he could honourably help it. His steering, I 
doubt not, was perfect, but in the course of half-an-hour it 
became ludicrously apparent that we were the tortoise 
chasing the hare, and that we should or could in no wise 
ever intercept that big ship. Short counsel thereupon, 
and determination, probably on my hint, to make for Inch- 
keith at least, and treat ourselves to a visit there. 

We prosperously reached Inchkeith, ran ourselves into 
a wild stony little bay (west end of the island towards the 
lighthouse), and stept ashore. Bay in miniature was 
prettily savage, every stone in it, big or Httle, lying just 



88 EDWARD IRVING. 

as the deluges had left them in ages long gone. Whole 
island was prettily savage. Grass on it mostly wild and 
scraggy, but equal to the keep of seven cows. Some 
patches (little bed-quilts as it were) of weak dishevelled 
barley trying to grow under difficulties ; these, except 
perhaps a square yard or two of potatoes equally ill off, 
were the only attempt at crop. Inhabitants none except 
these seven cows, and the lighthouse-keeper and his 
family. Conies probably abounded, but these vjevQ ferce 
nattirce, and didn't show face. In a slight hollow about 
the centre of the island (which island I think is traversed 
by a kind of hollow of which our little bay was the west- 
ern end) were still traceable some ghastly remnants of 
** Russian graves," graves from a Russian squadron which 
had wintered thereabouts in 1799 and had there buried its 
dead. Squadron we had often heard talked of, what foul 
creatures these Russian sailors were, how (for one thing) 
returning from their sprees in Edinburgh at late hours, 
they used to climb the lamp-posts in Leith Walk and 
drink out the train oil irresistible by vigilance of the po- 
lice, so that Leith Walk fell ever and anon into a more or 
less eclipsed condition during their stay ! Some rude 
wooden crosses, rank wild grass, and poor sad grave hil- 
locks almost abolished, were all of memorial they had 
left. The lighthouse was curious to us ; the only one I 
ever saw before or since. The " revolving light " not 
produced by a single lamp on its axis, but by ten or a 
dozen of them all set in a v/ide glass cylinder, each with 
its hollow mirror behind it, cylinder alone slowly turning, 
was quite a discovery to us. Lighthouse-keeper too in 



EDWARD IRVING. 89 

another sphere of enquiry was to me quite new ; by far 
the most life-weary looking mortal I ever saw. Surely no 
lover of the picturesque, for in nature there was nowhere 
a more glorious view. He had seven cows too, was well 
fed, I saw, well clad, had wife and children fairly eligible 
looking. A shrewd healthy Aberdeen native ; his light- 
house, especially his cylinder and lamps, all kept shining 
like a new shilling — a kindly man withal — yet in every 
feature of face and voice telling you, *' Behold the victim 
of unspeakable ennui." We got from him down below 
refection of the best, biscuits and new milk I think almost 
better in both kinds than I have tasted since. A man not 
greedy of money either. We left him almost sorrowfully, 
and never heard of him more. 

The scene in our little bay, as we were about proceed- 
ing to launch our boat, seemed to me the beautifuUest I 
had ever beheld. Sun about setting just in face of us, 
behind Ben Lomond far away. Edinburgh with its tow- 
ers ; the great silver mirror of the Frith girt by such a 
framework of mountains ; cities, rocks and fields and wavy 
landscapes on all hands of us ; and reaching right under 
foot, as I remember, came a broad pillar as of gold from 
the just sinking sun ; burning axle as it were going down 
to the centre of the world ! But we had to bear a hand 
and get our boat launched, daylight evidently going to 
end by and by. Kirkcaldy was some five miles off, and 
probably the tide not in our favour. Gradually the stars 
came out, and Kirkcaldy crept under its coverlid, showing 
not itself but its lights. We could still see one another in 
the fine clear grey, and pulled along what we could. We 



90 EDWARD IRVING. 

had no accident ; not the least ill-luck. Donaldson, and 
perhaps Irving too I now think, wore some air of anxiety. 
I myself by my folly felt nothing, though I now almost 
shudder on looking back. We leapt out on Kirkcaldy 
beach about eleven P.M., and then heard sufficiently what 
a misery and tremor for us various friends had been in. 

This was the small adventure to Inchkeith. Glen and 
family returned to Scotland some fifteen years ago ; he 
had great approval from his public, but died in a year or 
two, and I had never seen him again. His widow, backed 
by various Edinburgh testimonials, applied to Lord 
Aberdeen (Prime Minister) for a small pension on the 
** Literary list." Husband had translated the Bible (or 
New Testament) into Persic, among other public merits 
non-literary : and through her son solicited and urged me 
to help, which I did zealously, and by continual dunning 
of the Duke of Argyll (whom I did not then personally 
know and who was very good and patient with me), an 
annual 50/. was at last got ; upon which Mrs. Glen, add- 
ing to it some other small resources, could frugally but 
comfortably live. This must have been in 1853. I re- 
member the young Glen's continual importunity in the 
midst of my Friedrich incipiencies was not always pleas- 
ant, and my chief comfort in it was the pleasure which 
success would give my mother. Alas, my good mother 
did hear of it, but pleasure even in this was beyond her 
in the dark valley she was now travelling ! When she 
died (Christmas 1853), one of my reflections was : '* Too 
late for her that little bit of kindness ; my last poor effort, 
and it came too late." Young Glen with his too profuse 



EDWARD IRVING. 91 

thanks etc. was again rather importunate. Poor young 
soul, he is since dead. His mother appeared in person 
one morning at my door in Edinburgh (last spring (1866), 
in those Rector hurries and hurlyburlies now so sad to 
me) ; T. Erskine just leading me off somewhither. An 
aged decent widow, looking kindly on me and modestly 
thankful ; so changed I could not have recognised a fea- 
ture of her. How tragic to one is the sight of "■ old 
friends " ; a thing I always really shrink from. Such my 
lot has been ! 

Irving's visits and mine to Edinburgh were mostly 
together, and had always their attraction for us in the 
meeting with old acquaintances and objects of interest, 
but except from the books procured could not be accounted 
of importance. Our friends were mere ex-students, 
cleverish people mostly, but of no culture or information ; 
no aspiration beyond (on the best possible terms) bread 
and cheese. Their talk in good part was little else than 
gossip and more or less ingenious giggle. We lived 
habitually by their means in a kind of Edinburgh ele- 
ment, not in the still baser Kirkcaldy one, and that was 
all. Irving now and then perhaps called on some city 
clergyman, but seemed to have httle esteem of them by 
his reports to me afterwards, I myself by this time was 
indifferent on that head. On -one of those visits my last 
feeble tatter of connection with Divinity Hall affairs or 
clerical outlooks was allowed to snap itself and fall defi- 
nitely to the ground. Old Dr. Ritchie '' not at home" 
when I called to enter myself. " Good ! " answered I ; 
*' let the omen be fulfilled." Irving on the contrary was 



92 EDWARD IRVING. 

being licensed — probably through Annan Presbytery ; 
but I forget the when and where, and indeed conjecture 
it may have been before my coming to Kirkcaldy. What 
alone I well remember is his often and ever notable 
preaching in those Kirkcaldy years of mine. This gave 
him an interest in conspicuous clergymen — even if stupid 
— which I had not. Stupid those Edinburgh clergy were 
not at all by any means ; but narrow, ignorant, and bar- 
ren to us two, they without exception were. 

In Kirkcaldy circles (for poor Kirkcaldy had its circles 
and even its West end, much more genial to me than 
Annan used to be) Irving and I seldom or never met ; he 
little frequented them, I hardly at all. The one house 
where I often met him, besides his own, was the Manse, 
Rev. Mr. Martin's, which was a haunt of his, and where, 
for his sake partly, I was always welcome. There was a 
feeble intellectuality current here ; the minister was a 
precise, innocent, didactic kind of man, and I now and 
then was willing enough to step in, though various boys 
and girls went cackling about, and Martin himself was 
pretty much the only item I really liked. The girls were 
some of them grown up, not quite ill-looking, and all 
thought to be or thinking themselves " clever and 
learned ; " yet even these, strange to say, in the great 
rarity of the article and my ardent devotion to it, were 
without charm to me. They were not the best kind of 
children ; none of them I used to think quite worthy of 
such a father. Martin himself had a kind of cheery grace 
and sociality of way (though much afflicted by dyspepsia) 
a clear-minded, brotherly, well-intentioned man, and 



EDWARD IRVING. 93 

bating a certain glimmer of vanity which always looked 
through, altogether honest, wholesome as Scotch oat- 
meal. His wife, who had been a beauty, perhaps a wit, 
and was now grown a notable manager of house and chil- 
dren, seemed to me always of much inferior type, visibly 
proud as well as vain, of a snappish rather uncomfortable 
manner, betokening, even in her kindness, steady egoism 
and various splenetic qualities. A big burly brother of 
hers, a clergyman whom I have seen, a logical enough, 
sarcastic, swashing kind of man in his sphere, struck me 
as kneaded out of precisely the same clay. All Martin's 
children, I used to fancy, had this bad cross in the birth ; 
it is certain that none of them came to much good. The 
eldest Miss Martin, perhaps near twenty by this time, was 
of bouncing, frank, gay manners and talk, studious to be 
amiable, but never quite satisfactory on the side oi ge^iic- 
ineness. Something of affected you feared always in 
these fine spirits and smiling discourses, to which how- 
ever you answered with smiles. She was very ill-looking 
withal ; a skin always under blotches and discolourment ; 
muddy grey eyes, which for their part never laughed with 
the other features ; pock-marked, ill-shapen triangular 
kind of face, with hollow cheeks and long chin ; decidedly 
unbeautiful as a young woman. In spite of all which 
(having perhaps the arena much to herself) she had 
managed to charm poor Irving for the time being, and it 
was understood they were engaged, which unfortunately 
proved to be the fact. Her maternal ill-qualities came 
out in her afterwards as a bride (an engaged young lady), 
and still more strongly as a wife. Poor woman, it was 



94 EDWARD IRVING. 

never with her will ; you could perceive she had always 
her father's strong and true wish to be good, had not her 
difficulties been quite too strong. But it was and is very 
visible to me, she (unconsciously for much the greater 
part) did a good deal aggravate all that was bad in Irving's 
"London position," and impeded his wise profiting by 
what was really good in it. Let this be enough said on 
that subject for the present. 

Irving's preachings as a licentiate (or probationer 
waiting for fixed appointment) were always interesting to 
whoever had acquaintance with him, especially to me who 
was his intimate. Mixed with but little of self-comparison 
or other dangerous ingredient, indeed with loyal recog- 
nition on the part of most of us, and without any grudg- 
ing or hidden eiivy, we enjoyed the broad potency of his 
dehneations, exhortations, and free flowing eloquences, 
which had all a manly and original turn ; and then after- 
wards there was sure to be on the part of the public a 
great deal of criticising pro and contra, which also had 
its entertainment for us. From the first Irving read his 
discourses, but not in a servile manner ; of attitude, ges- 
ture, elocution there was no neglect. His voice was very 
fine ; melodious depth, strength, clearness, its chief char- 
acteristics. I have heard more pathetic voices, going 
more direct to the heart both in the way of indignation 
and of pity, but recollect none that better filled the ear. 
He affected the Miltonic or old English Puritan style, and 
strove visibly to imitate it more and more till almost the 
end of his career, when indeed it had become his own, 
and was the language he used in utmost heat of business 



EDWARD IRVING. 95 

for expressing his meaning. At this time and for years 
afterwards there was something of preconceived intention 
visible in it, in fact of real affectation, as there could not 
well help being. To his example also I suppose I owe 
something of my own poor affectations in that matter, 
wdiich are now more or less visible to me, much repented 
of or not. We were all taught at that time by Coleridge 
etc. that the old English dramatists, divines, philosophers, 
judicious Hooker, Milton, Sir Thomas Browne, were the 
genuine exemplars, which I also tried to believe, but 
never rightly could as a zvhole. The young must learn 
to speak by imitation of the older who already do it, or 
have done it. The ultimate rule is : learn so far as possi- 
ble to be intelligible and transparent — no notice taken of 
your style, but solely of what you express by it. This is 
your clear rule, and if you have anything which is not 
quite trivial to express to your contemporaries, you will 
find such rule a great deal more difficult to follow than 
many people think. 

On the whole, poor Irving's style was sufficiently sur- 
prising to his hidebound public, and this was but a slight 
circumstance to the novelty of the matter he set forth 
upon them. Actual practice. " If this thing is true, why 
not do it ? You had better do it. There will be nothing 
but misery and ruin in not doing it." That was the gist 
and continual purport of all his discoursing, to the aston- 
ishment and deep offence of hidebound mankind. There 
was doubtless something of rashness in the young Irving's 
way of preaching ; not perhaps quite enough of pure, 
complete, and serious conviction (which ought to have 



96 EDWARD IRVING. 

lain silent a good while before it took to speaking). In 
general I own to have felt that there was present a certain 
inflation or spiritual bombast in much of this, a trifle of 
unconscious playactorism (highly unconscious but not 
quite absent) which had been unavoidable to the brave 
young prophet and reformer. But brave he was, and 
bearing full upon the truth if not yet quite attaining it. 
And as to the oflence he gave, our withers were unwrung. 
I for one was perhaps rather entertained by it, and grinned 
in secret to think of the hides it was piercing ! Both in 
Fife and over in Edinburgh, I have known the oflence 
very rampant. Once in Kirkcaldy Kirk, which was well 
filled and all dead silent under Irving's grand voice, the 
door of a pew a good way in front of me (ground floor — 
right-hand as you fronted the preacher), banged suddenly 
open, and there bolted out of it a middle-aged or elderly 
little man (an insignificant baker by position), who with 
long swift strides, and face and big eyes all in wrath, 
came tramping and sounding along the flags close past 
my right hand, and vanished out of doors with a slam ; 
Irving quite victoriously disregarding. I remember the 
violently angry face well enough, but not the least what 
the offence could have been. A kind of " Who are you, 
sir, that dare to tutor us in that manner, and harrow up 
our orthodox quiet skin with your novelties ? " Probably 
that was all. In Irving's preaching there was present or 
prefigured generous opulence of ability in all kinds (ex- 
cept perhaps the very highest kind not even prefigured), 
but much of it was still crude ; and this was the reception 
it had for a good few years to come ; indeed to the very 



EDWARD IRVING. 97 

end he never carried all the world along with him, as 
some have done with far fewer qualities. 

In vacation time, twice over, I made a walking tour 
with him. First time I think was to the Trosachs, and 
home by Loch Lomond, Greenock, Glasgow, etc., many- 
parts of which are still visible to me. The party generally 
was to be of four ; one Piers, who was Irving's housemate 
or even landlord, schoolmaster of Abbotshall, i.e., of 
''The Links," at the southern extra-burghal part of Kirk- 
caldy, a cheerful scatterbrained creature who went ulti- 
mately as preacher or professor of something to the Cape 
of Good Hope, and one Brown (James Brown), who had 
succeeded Irving in Haddington, and was now tutor some- 
where. The full rally was not to be till Stirling ; even 
Piers was gone ahead ; and Irving and I after an official 
dinner with the burghal dignitaries of Kirkcaldy, who 
strove to be pleasant, set out together one grey August 
evening by Forth sands towards Torryburn. Piers was 
to have beds ready for us there, and we cheerily walked 
along our mostly dark and intricate twenty-two miles. 
But Piers had nothing serviceably ready ; we could not 
even discover Piers at that dead hour (2 A.M.), and had a 
good deal of groping and adventuring before a poor inn 
opened to us with two coarse clean beds in it, in which 
we instantly fell asleep. Piers did in person rouse us next 
morning about six, but we concordantiy met him with 
mere ha-ha's ! and inarticulate hootings of satirical rebuke, 
to such extent that Piers, convicted of nothing but heroic 
punctuality, flung himself out into the rain again in mo- 
mentary indignant puff, and strode away for Stirling,, 
7 



98 EDWARD IRVING. 

where we next saw him after four or five hours. I re- 
member the squalor of our bedroom in the dim rainy 
light, and how little we cared for it in our opulence of 
youth. The sight of giant Irving in a shortish shirt on 
the sanded floor, drinking patiently a large tankard of 
** penny whaup " (the smallest beer in creation) before be- 
ginning to dress, is still present to me as comic. Of sub- 
lime or tragic, the night before a mysterious great red 
glow is much more memorable, which had long hung be- 
fore us in the murky sky, growing gradually brighter and 
bigger, till at last we found it must be Carron Ironworks, 
on the other side of Forth, one of the most impressive 
sights. Our march to Stirling was under pouring rain 
for most part, but I recollect enjoying the romance of it ; 
Kincardine, Culross (Cu'ros), Clackmannan, here they are 
then ; what a wonder to be here ! The Links of Forth, 
the Ochills, Grampians, Forth itself, Stirling, lion-shaped, 
ahead, like a lion couchant with the castle for his crown ; 
all this was beautiful in spite of rain. Welcome too was 
the inside of Stirling, with its fine warm inn and the 
excellent refection and thorough drying and refitting 
we got there. Piers and Brown looking pleasantly on. 
Strolling and sight-seeing, (day now very fine — Stirling 
all washed) till we marched for Doune in the evening 
(Brig of Teith, ''blue and arrowy Teith," Irving and I 
took that byway in the dusk) ; breakfast in Callander 
next morning, and get to Loch Katrine in an hour or 
two more. I have not been in that region again till 
August last year, four days of magnificently perfect hos- 
pitality with Stirling of Keir. Almost surprising how 



EDWARD IRVING. 99 

mournful it was to '* look on this picture and on that " at 
interval of fifty years. 

Ir\'ing was in a sort the captain of our expedition : 
had been there before, could recommend ever>thing ; 
was made, unjustly by us, responsible for everything. 
The Trosachs I found really grand and impressive. Loch 
Katrine exquisitely so (my first taste of the beautiful in 
scenery;. Not so, any of us, the dirty smoky farm hut at 
the entrance, with no provision in it but bad oatcakes and 
unacceptable whisky, or the '* Mrs. Stewart" who some- 
what royally presided over it, and dispensed these dainties, 
expecting to be flattered like an independency as well as 
paid hke an innkeeper. Poor Ir\ ing could not help it ; 
but in fine, the rains, the hardships, the ill diet was begin- 
ning to act on us all, and I could perceive that we were 
in danger of splitting into two parties. Brown, leader of 
the Opposition — myself considerably flattered by him, 
though not seduced by him into factious courses, only 
led to see how strong poor Piers was for the Government 
interest. This went to no lengrth, never bigger than a 
summer cloud or the incipiency of one. But Brown in 
secret would never quite let it die out (a jealous kind of 
man, I gradually found ; had been much commended to 
us by Ir\'ing, as of superior intellect and honesty ; which 
qualities I hke wise found in him, though with the above 
abatement), and there were divisions of vote in the walk- 
ing parliament, two against two ; and had there not been 
at this point, by a kind of outward and legitimate reason, 
which proved very sanatorj' in the case, an actual division 
of routes, the folly might have lasted longer and become 



lOO EDWARD IRVING. 

audible and visible — which it never did. Sailing up Loch 
Katrine in top or unpicturesque part, Irving and Piers 
settled with us that only we two should go across Loch 
Lomond, round by Tarbert, Roseneath, Greenock, they 
meanwhile making direct for Paisley country, where they 
had business. And so on stepping out and paying our- 
boatmen they said adieu, and at once struck leftwards, 
we going straight ahead ; rendezvous to be at Glasgow 
again on such and such a day. (What feeble trash is all 
this. . . . Ah me ! no better than Irving's penny 
whaup with the gas^^;/^ out of it. Stop to-day, October 
4, 1866.) 

The heath was bare, trackless, sun going almost 
down. Brown and I (our friends soon disappearing) had 
an interesting march, good part of it dark, and flavoured 
just to the right pitch with something of anxiety and 
something of danger. The sinking sun threw his reflexes 
on a tame-looking house with many windows some way 
to our right, the " KJiarrison of Infersnaidt," an ancient 
anti-Rob Roy establishment, as two rough Highland 
wayfarers had lately informed us. Other house or per- 
sons we did not see, but made for the shoulder of Benlo- 
mond and the boatman's hut, partly, I think, by the 
stars. Boatman and huthold were in bed, but he, with a 
♦ragged little sister or wife, cheerfully roused themselves ; 
cheerfully and for most part in silence, rowed us across 
(under the spangled vault of midnight ; which, with the 
lake waters silent as if in deep dream, several miles broad 
here, had their due impression on us) correctly to Tarbert, 
a most hospitable, clean, and welcome little country inn 



EDWARD IRVING. 101 

(now a huge "hotel" I hear, worse luck to it, with its 
nasty " Hotel Company limited"). On awakening next 
morning, I heard from below the sound of a churn ; 
prophecy of new genuine butter, and even of ditto rustic 
buttermilk. 

Brown and I did very well on our separate branch of 
pilgrimage ; pleasant walk and talk down to the west 
margin of the loch (incomparable among lakes or lochs 
yet known to me) ; past Smollett's pillar ; emerge on the 
view of Greenock, on Helensburgh, and across to Rose- 
neath Manse, where with a Rev. Mr. Story, not yet quite 
inducted, whose " Life " has since been published, who 
was an acquaintance of Brown's, we were warmly wel- 
comed and well entertained for a couple of days. Story 
I never saw again, but he, acquainted in Haddington 
neighbourhood, saw some time after incidentally a certain 
bright figure, to whom I am obliged to him at this mo- 
ment for speaking favourably of me. ''Talent plenty; 
fine vein oi^ satire in him ! " something like this. I sup- 
pose they had been talking of Irving, whom both of them 
knew and liked well. Her, probably at that time I had 
still never seen, but she told me long afterwards. 

At Greenock I first saw steamers on the water ; queer 
little dumpy things with a red sail to each, and legible 
name, " Defiance," and such like, bobbing about there, 
and making continual passages to Glasgow as their busi- 
ness. Not till about two years later (1819 if I mistake 
not), did Forth see a steamer ; Forth's first was far bigger 
than the Greenock ones, and called itself " The Tug," 
being intended for towing ships in those narrow waters, 



102 EDWARD IRVING. 

as I have often seen it doing ; it still, and no rival or con- 
gener, till (in 1825) Leith, spurred on by one Bain, a kind 
of scientific half-pay Master R.N., got up a large finely 
^appointed steamer, or pair of steamers, for London ; 
which, so successful were they, all ports then set to imita- 
ting. London alone still held back for a good few years ; 
London was notably shy of the steam ship, great as are 
its doings now in that line. An old friend of mine, the 
late Mr. Strachey,' has told me that in his school days he 
at one time — early in the Nineties I should guess, say 
1793 — used to see, in crossing Westminster Bridge, a little 
model steamship paddling to and fro between him and 
Blackfriars Bridge, with steam funnel, paddle wheels, and 
the other outfit, exhibiting and recommending itself to 
London and whatever scientific or other spirit of marine 
adventure London might have. London entirely dead to 
the phenomenon — which had to duck under and dive 
across the Atlantic before London saw it again, when 
a new generation had risen. The real inventor of 
steamships, I have learned credibly elsewhere, the maker 
and proprietor of that fruitless model on the Thames, was 
Mr. Miller, Laird of Dalswinton in Dumfriesshire (Poet 
Burns' landlord), Avho spent his life and his estate in that 
adventure, and is not now to be heard of in those parts ; 
having had to sell Dalswinton and die quasi-bankrupt 
(and I should think broken-hearted) after that completing 
of his painful invention and finding London and mankind 

^ Late Charles Buller's uncle. Somersesthire gentleman, ex-Indian, died 
in I S3 1, an examiner in the India House ; colleague of John S. Mill and his 
father there. 



EDWARD IRVING. IO3 

dead to it. Miller's assistant and work-hand for many 
years was John Bell, a joiner in the neighbouring village of 
Thornhill. Miller being ruined, Bell was out of work and 
connection : emigrated to New York, and there speaking 
much of his old master, and glorious unheeded invention 
well known to Bell in all its outlines or details, at length 
found one Fulton to listen to him ; and by ** Fulton and 
Bell" (about 1809), an actual packet steamer was got 
launched, and, lucratively plying on the Hudson River, 
became the miracle of Yankee-land, and gradually of all 
lands. These I beheve are essentially the facts. Old 
Robert M'Oueen of Thornhill, Strachey of the India 
House, and many other bits of good testimony and indi- 
cation, once far apart, curiously coalescing and corre- 
sponding for me. And as, possibly enough, the story is 
not now known in whole to anybody but myself, it may 
go in here as a digression — a propos of those brisk little 
Greenock steamers which I first saw, and still so vividly 
remember; little "Defiance," etc., saucily bounding 
about with their red sails in the sun, on this my tour with 
Irving. 

Those old three days at Roseneath are all very vivid 
to me, and marked in white. The quiet blue mountain 
masses, giant Cobler overhanging, bright seas, bright 
skies, Roseneath new mansion (still unfinished and stand- 
ing as it did), the grand old oaks, and a certain handfast, 
middle-aged, practical and most polite '' Mr. Campbell " 
(the Argyll factor there) and his two sisters, excellent lean 
old ladies, with their wild Highland accent, wiredrawn 
but genuine good manners and good principles, and not 



104 EDWARD IRVING. 

least their astonishment, and shrill interjections at once 
of love and fear, over the talk they contrived to get out 
of me one evening and perhaps another when we went 
across to tea ; all this is still pretty to me to remember. 
They are all dead, the good souls— Campbell himself, the 
Duke told me, died only lately, very old — but they were 
to my rustic eyes of a superior, richly furnished stratum 
of society ; and the thought that I too might perhaps be 
*' one and somewhat " {Ein und Etwas) among my fellow 
creatures by and by, was secretly very welcome at their 
hands. We rejoined Irving and Piers at Glasgow ; I re- 
member our glad embarkation towards Paisley by canal 
trackboat ; visit preappointed for us by Irving, in a good 
old lady's house, whose son was Irving's boarder; the 
dusty, sunny Glasgow evening ; and my friend's joy to 
see Brown and me. Irving was very good and jocund- 
hearted : most bhthe his good old lady, whom I had seen 
at Kirkcaldy before. We had a pleasant day or two in 
those neighbourhoods; the picturesque, the comic, and 
the genially common all prettily combining ; particulars 
now much forgotten. Piers went to eastward' Dunse, his 
native country ; '* born i' Dunse," equal in sound to born 
a dunce, as Irving's laugh would sometimes remind him ; 
''opposition party" (except it were in the secret of 
Brown's jealous heart) there was now none ; Irving in 
truth was the natural king among us, and his quaHties of 
captaincy in such a matter were indisputable. 

Brown, he, and I went by the Falls of Clyde ; I do 
not recollect the rest of our route, except that at New 
Lanark, a green silent valley, with cotton works turned 



EDWARD IRVING. 105 

by Clyde waters, we called to see Robert Owen, the then 
incipient arch-gomeril, " model school," and thought it 
(and him, whom after all we did not see, and knew only by 
his pamphlets and it) a thing of wind not worth consider- 
ing farther ; and that after sight of the Falls, which prob- 
ably was next day, Irving came out as captain in a fine 
new phase. The Falls were very grand and stormful — 
nothing to say against the Falls ; but at the last of them, 
or possibly at Bothwell Banks farther on, a woman who 
officiated as guide and cicerone, most superfluous, unwill- 
ing too, but firmly persistent in her purpose, happened 
to be in her worst humour ; did nothing but snap and 
snarl, and being answered by bits of quiz, towered at 
length into foam. She intimated she would bring some- 
body who would ask us how we could so treat an unpro- 
tected female, and vanished to seek the champion or 
champions. As our business was done, and the woman 
paid too, I own (with shame if needed) my thought would 
have been to march with decent activity on our way, not 
looking back unless summoned to do it, and prudently 
evading discrepant circles of that sort. Not so Irving, 
who drew himself up to his full height and breadth, cud- 
gel in hand, and stood there, flanked by Brown and me, 
waiting the issue. 

Issue was, a thickish kind of man, seemingly the 
woman's husband, a little older than any of us, stept out 
with her, calmly enough surveying, and at a respectful 
distance ; asked if we would buy apples ? Upon which 
with negatory grin we did march. I recollect too that 
we visited lead hills and descended into the mines ; that 



I06 EDWARD IRVING. 

Irving prior to Annan must have struck away from us at 
some point. Brown and I, on arriving at Mainhill, found 
my dear good mother in the saddest state ; dregs of a bad 
fever hanging on her ; my profound sorrow at which 
seemed to be a surprise to Brown, according to his let- 
ters afterwards. With Brown, for a year or two ensuing, 
I continued to have some not unpleasant correspondence ; 
a conscientious, accurate, clear-sighted, but rather narrow 
and unfruitful man, at present tutor to som.e Lockhart of 
Lee, and wintering in Edinburgh. Went afterwards to 
India as Presbyterian clergyman somewhere, and shrank 
gradually, we heard, into complete aridity, phrenology, 
etc., etc., and before long died there. He had, after Ir- 
ving, been my dear little Jeannie's teacher and tutor ; 
she never had but these two, and the name of her, like a 
bright object far above me like a star, occasionally came 
up between them on that journey ; I dare say at other 
times. She retained a child's regard for James Brown, 
and in this house he was always a memorable object. 

My second tour with Irving had nothing of circuit in 
it : a mere walk homeward through the Peebles-Moffat 
moor country, and Is not worth going into in any detail. 
The region was without roads, often without foot-tracks, 
had no vestige of an inn, so that there was a kind of 
knight-errantry in threading your way through it ; not to 
mention the romance that naturally lay in its Ettrick and 
Yarrow, and old melodious songs and traditions. We 
walked up Meggat Water to beyond the sources, emerged 
into Yarrow, not far above St. Mary's Loch ; a charming 
secluded shepherd country, with excellent shepherd popu- 



EDWARD IRVING. lOJ 

lation — nowhere setting up to be picturesque, but every- 
where honest, comely, well done-to, peaceable and useful. 
Nor anywhere without its solidly characteristic features, 
hills, mountains, clear rushing streams, cosy nooks and 
homesteads, all of fine rustic type ; and presented to you 
iJi naturd, not as in a Drury Lane with stage-lights and 
for a purpose ; the vast and yet not savage solitude as an 
impressive item, long miles from farm to farm, or even 
from one shepherd's cottage to another. No company to 
you but tlie rustle of the grass underfoot, the tinkling of 
the brook, or the voices of innocent primaeval things. I 
repeatedly walked through that country up to Edinburgh 
and down by myself in subsequent years, and nowhere 
remember such affectionate, sad, and thoughtful, and in 
fact, interesting and salutary journeys, I have had days 
clear as Italy (as in this Irving case), days moist and drip- 
ping, overhung with the infinite of silent grey — and per- 
haps the latter were the preferable in certain moods. You 
had the world and its waste imbroglios of joy and woe, of 
light and darkness, to yourself alone. You cculd strip 
barefoot if it suited better, carry shoes and socks over 
shoulder, hung on your stick ; clean shirt and comb were 
in your pocket ; omnia mea meciim porto. You lodged 
with shepherds who had clean solid cottages ; whole- 
some eggs, milk, oatbread, porridge, clean blankets to 
their beds, and a great deal of human sense and unadul- 
terated natural politeness. Canty, shrewd and witty fel- 
lows, when you set them talking ; knew" from their hill 
tops every bit of country between Forth and Solway, and 
all the shepherd inhabitants within fifty miles, being a 



I08 EDWARD IRVING. 

kind of confraternity of shepherds from father to son. 
No sort of peasant labourers I have ever come across 
seemed to me so happily situated, morally and physically 
well-developed, and deserving to be happy, as those shep- 
herds of the Cheviots. fortunatos nimuun ! But per- 
haps it is all altered not a little now, as I sure enough am 
who speak of it ! 

Irving's course and mine was from bonny Yarrow on- 
wards by Loch Skene and the '' Grey Mare's Tail " (finest 
of all cataracts, lonesome, simple, grand, that are now in 
my memory) down into Moffat dale where we lodged in 
a shepherd's cottage, Caplegill, old Walter Welsh's farm, 
must have been near, though I knew not of it then. 
From the shepherd people came good talk ; Irving skilful 
to elicit topography ; Poet Hogg (who was then a celeb- 
rity), '' Shirra Scott " (Sir Walter, Sheriff of Selkirkshire, 
whose borders we had just emerged from) ; then gradu- 
ally stores of local anecdote, personal history, etc. These 
good people never once asked us whence, whither, or what 
are you ? but waited till perhaps it voluntarily came, as 
generally chanced. Moffat dale with its green holms and 
hill ranges, " Correyran Saddle-yoke," (actual quasi-sad- 
die, you can sit astride anywhere, and a stone dropped 
from either hand will roll and bound a mile), with its 
pleasant groves and farmsteads, voiceful limpid waters 
rushing fast/?;- Annan, all was very beautiful to us ; but 
what I mo.st remember is Irving's arrival at Mainhill with 
me to tea, and how between my father and him there was 
such a mutual recognition. My father had seen Loch 
Skene, the Grey Mare's Tail, etc., in his youth, and now 



EDWARD IRVIXG. IO9 

gave in few words such a picture of it, forty years after 
sight, as charmed and astonished Ir\'ing ; who on his side 
was equally unlike a common man, definitely true, intelli- 
gent, frankly courteous , faithful in whatever he spoke 
about. ^ly father and he saw one another (on similar 
occasions) twice or thrice again, always with increasing 
esteem ; and I rather think it was from Irving on this par- 
ticular occasion that I was first led to compare my father 
with other men, and see how immensely superior he, al- 
together unconsciously, was. Xo intellect equal to his, 
in certain important respects, have I ever met with in the 
world. Of my mother, Irving never made any reading 
for himself, or could well have made, but only through 
me, and that too he believed in and loved well ; generally 
all recognising Irving. 

The Kirkcaldy population were a pleasant honest 
kind of fellow mortals ; something of quietly fruitful, of 
good old Scotch in their works and ways ; more vernacu- 
lar, peaceable, fixed, and almost genial in their mode of 
life than I had been used to in the Border home-land. 
Fife generally we liked, those ancient little burghs and 
sea villages, with their poor little havens, salt pans, and 
weatherbeaten bits of Cyclopean breakwaters and rude 
innocent machineries, are still kindly to me to think of. 
Kirkcaldy itself had many looms, had Baltic trade, had 
whale-fishery, etc., and was a solidly diligent, yet by no 
means a panting, puffing, or in any way gambling *' Lang 
Town." The flaxmill-machinery, I remember, was turned 
mainly by ivind ; and curious blue painted wheels, with 
oblique vans (how working I never saw) rose from many 



no EDWARD IRVING. 

roofs for that end. We all, I In particular, always rather 
liked the people, though from the distance chiefly, cha- 
grined and discouraged by the sad trade one had ! Some 
hospitable human firesides I found, and these were at in- 
tervals a fine little element, but In general we were but 
onlookers (the one real society our books and our few 
selves). Not even with the bright ''young ladles " (which 
was a sad feature) were we on speaking terms. By far 
the cleverest and brightest, however, an ex-pupil of 
Irvlng's and genealogically and otherwise (being poorlsh, 
proud, and well-bred) a kind of ahen in the place, I did 
at last make some acquaintance with (at Irvlng's first, I 
think, though she rarely came thither) ; some acquaint- 
ance, and It might easily have been more, had she and her 
aunt and our economics and other circumstances liked. 
She was of the falr-complexioned, softly elegant, softly 
grave, witty and comely type, and had a good deal of 
gracefulness, intelligence, and other talent. Irving too, 
it w^as sometimes thought, found her very Interesting, 
could the Miss Martin bonds have allowed, vrhlch they 
never would. To me who had only known her for a few 
months, and who within twelve or fifteen months saw the 
last of her, she continued for perhaps some three years a 
figure hanging more or less In my fancy on the usual 
romantic, or latterly quite elegiac and silent terms, and 
to this day there is in me a goodwill to her, a candid and 
gentle pity for her, if needed at all. She was of the 
Aberdeenshire Gordons, a far-off Huntly I doubt not ; 
"Margaret Gordon," born I think In New Brunswick, 
where her father, probably In some official post, had died 



EDWARD IRVING. Ill 

young and poor. Her accent was prettily English and 
her voice very fine. An aunt (widow in Fife, childless, 
with limited resources, but of frugal cultivated turn, a 
lean, proud elderly dame, once a "Miss Gordon " her- 
self, sang Scotch songs beautifully, and talked shrewd 
Aberdeenish in accent and otherwise), had adopted her 
and brought her hither over seas ; and here as Irving's 
ex-pupil she now, cheery though with dim outlooks, was. 
Irving saw her again in Glasgow one summer, touring, 
etc., he himself accompanying joyfully, not joining (so I 
understood it) the retinue of suitors or potential suitors, 
rather perhaps indicating gently " Xo, I must not" for 
the last time. A year or so after we heard the fair Mar- 
garet had married some rich insignificant Aberdeen Mr. 
Something, who afterwards got into Parliament, thence 
out to " Xova Scotia" (or so) as *' Governor," and I 
heard of her no more, except that lately she was still 
living about Aberdeen, childless, as the Dowager Lady, 
her i\Ir. Something having got knighted before dying. 
Poor Margaret ! Speak to her since the " good-bye 
then " at Kirkcaldy in 1819 I never did or could. I saw 
her, recognisably to me, here in her London time, twice 
(1840 or so), once with her maid in Piccadilly, prome- 
nading, little altered ; a second time, that same year or 
next, on horseback both of us, and meeting in the gate 
of Hyde Park, when her eyes (but that was all) said to 
me almost touchingly, " Yes, yes, that is you." Enough 
of that old matter, which but half concerns Irving and is 
now quite extinct. 

In the space of two years we had all got tired of 



112 EDWARD IRVING. 

schoolmastering and its mean contradictions and poor 
results : Irving and I quite resolute to give it up for 
good ; the headlong Piers disinclined for it on the then 
terms longer, and in the end of 1818 we all three went 
away ; Irving and I to Edinburgh, Piers to his own east 
country, whom I never saw again with eyes, poor good 
rattling soul. Irving's outlooks in Edinburgh were not 
of the best, considerably checkered with dubiety, oppo- 
sition, and even flat disfavour in some quarters ; but at 
least they were far superior to mine, and indeed, I was 
beginning my four or five most miserable dark, sick, and 
heavy-laden years ; Irving, after some staggerings aback, 
his seven or eight healthiest and brightest. He had as 
one item several good hundreds of money to wait upon. 
My peculium I don't recollect, but it could not have ex- 
ceeded 100/. I was without friends, experience, or con- 
nection in the sphere of human business, was of shy 
humour, proud enough and to spare, and had begun my 
long curriculum of dyspepsia which has never ended 
since ! 

Irving lived in Bristo Street, more expensive rooms 
than mine, used to give breakfasts to intellectualities he 
fell in with, I often a guest with them. They were but 
stupid intellectualities, and the talk I got into there did 
not please me even then ; though it was well enough re- 
ceived. A visible gloom occasionally hung over Irving, 
his old strong sunshine only getting out from time to 
time. He gave lessons in mathematics, once for a while 
to Captain Basil Hall, who had a kind of thin celebrity 
then, and did not seem to love too well that small lion or 



EDWARD IRVING. 113 

his ways with him. Small lion came to propose for me at 
one stage ; wished me to go out with him *' to Dunglas " 
and there do " lunars " in his name, he looking on and 
learning of me what would come of its own will. " Lu- 
nars " meanwhile were to go to the Admiralty, testifying 
there what a careful studious Captain he was, and help to 
get him promotion, so the little wretch smilingly told me. 
I remember the figure of him in my dim lodging as a 
gay, crackling, sniggering spectre, one dusk, and en- 
deavouring to seduce my affability in lieu of liberal wages 
into this adventure. Wages, I think, were to be small- 
ish ("so poor are we"), but then the great Playfair is 
coming on visit. " You will see Professor Playfair." I 
had not the least notion of such an enterprise on these 
shining terms, and Captain Basil with his great Playfair in 
posse vanished for me into the shades of dusk for good. 
I don't think Irving ever had any other pupil but this 
Basil for perhaps a three months. I had not even Basil, 
though private teaching, to me the poorer, was much 
the more desirable if it would please to come ; which it 
generally would not in the least. I was timorously aim- 
ing towards ''literature " too ; thought in audacious mo- 
ments I might perhaps earn some trifle that way by honest 
labour to help my finance ; but in that too I was painfully 
sceptical (talent and opportunity alike doubtful, alike in- 
credible, to me poor downtrodden soulj and in fact there 
came little enough of produce or finance to me from 
that source, and for the first years absolutely none in spite 
of my diligent and desperate efforts which are sad to me 
to think of even now. Acti labor es ; yes, but of such a 



114 EDWARD IRVING. 

futile, dismal lonely, dim and chaotic kind, in a scene all 
ghastly-chaos to one, sad, dim and ugly as the shores of 
Styx and Phlegethon, as a nightmare-dream, become real ! 
No more of that ; it did not conquer me, or quite kill 
me, thank God. Irving thought of nothing as ultimate, 
but a clerical career, obstacles once overcome; in the 
meanwhile we heard of robust temporary projects. 
**Tour to Switzerland," glaciers, Geneva, ''Lake of 
Thun," very grand to think of, was one of them ; none of 
which took effect. 

I forget how long it was till the then famed Dr. Chal- 
mers, fallen in want of an assistant, cast his eye on Irving. 
I think it was in the summer following our advent to 
Edinburgh. I heard duly about it, how Rev. Andrew 
Thomson, famous malleus of theology in that time, had 
mentioned Irving's name, had engaged to get Chalmers a 
hearing of him in his (Andrew's) church ; how Chalmers 
heard incognito^ and there ensued negotiation. Once I 
recollect transiently seeing the famed Andrew on occasion 
of it (something Irving had forgotten with him, and wished 
me to call for) and what a lean-minded, iracund, ignorant 
kind of man Andrew seemed to me ; also much more 
vividly, in autumn following, one fine airy October day in 
Annandale, Irving on foot on his way to Glasgow for a 
month of actual trial. Had come by Mainhill, and picked 
me up to walk with him seven or eight miles farther into 
Dryfe Water (i.e. valley watered by clear swift Dryfe, 
quasi Drive, so impetuous and swift is it), where was a cer- 
tain witty comrade of ours, one Frank Dickson, preacher 
at once and farmer (only son and heir of his father who 



EDWARD IRVING. Il5 

had died In that latter capacity). We found Frank I con- 
clude, though the whole is now dim to me, till we arrived 
all three (Frank and I to set Irving on his road and bid 
him good speed) on the top of a hill commanding all upper 
Annandale, and the grand mass of Moffat hills, where 
we paused thoughtful a few moments. The blue sky was 
beautifully spotted with white clouds, which and their 
shadows on the wide landscape, the wind was beautifully 
chasing. Like life, I said with a kind of emotion, on 
which Irving silently pressed my arm with the hand near 
it or perhaps on it, and a moment after, with no word but 
his "farewell" and ours, strode swiftly away. A mail 
coach would find him at MofTat that same evening (after 
his walk of about thirty miles), and carry him to Glasgow 
to sleep. And the curtains sink again on Frank and me 
at this time. 

Frank was a notable kind of man, and one of the 
memorabilities, to Irving as well as me ; a most quizzing, 
merry, entertaining, guileless, and unmalicious man ; with 
very considerable logic, reading, contemptuous observa- 
tion and intelh'gence, much real tenderness too, when not 
obstructed, and a mournful true affection especially for 
the friends he had lost by death ! No mean impediment 
there any more (that was it), for Frank was very sensitive, 
easily moved to something of envy, and as if surprised 
when contempt was not possible ; easy banter was what 
he habitually dwelt in ; for the rest an honourable, bright, 
amiable man ; alas, and his end was very tragic ! I have 
hardly seen a man with more opulence of conversation, 
wit, fantastic bantering, ingenuity, and genial human 



Il6 EDWARD IRVING. 

sense of the ridiculous in men and things. Charles 
BuUer, perhaps, but he was of far more refined, deli- 
cately managed, and less copious tone ; finer by nature, 
I should say, as well as by culture, and had nothing of 
the fine Annandale Rabelais turn which had grown up, 
partly of will and at length by industry as well, in poor 
Frank Dickson in the valley of Dryfe amid his little stock 
of books and rustic phenomena. A slightly built man, 
nimble-looking and yet lazy-looking, our Annandale 
Rabelais ; thin, neatly expressive aquiline face, grey 
genially laughing eyes, something sternly serious and 
resolute in the squarish fine brow, nose specially aqui- 
line, thin and rather small. I well remember the play of 
point and nostrils there, while his w^ild home-grown Gar- 
gantuisuts went on. He rocked rather, and negligently 
wriggled in walking or standing, something slightly 
twisted in the spine, I think ; but he made so much 
small involuntary tossing and gesticulating while he 
spoke or listened, you never noticed the twist. What 
a childlike and yet half imp-like volume of laughter lay 
in Frank ; how he would fling back his fine head, left 
cheek up, not himself laughing much or loud even, but 
showing you such continents of inward gleesome mirth 
and victorious mockery of the dear stupid ones who had 
crossed his sphere of observation. A wild roll of sombre 
eloquence lay in him too, and I have seen in his sermons 
sometimes that brow and aquiline face grow dark, sad, 
and thunderous like the eagle of Jove. I always liked 
poor Frank, and he me heartily. After having tried to 
banter me down and recognised the mistake, which he 



EDWARD IRVING. 11/ 

loyally did for himself and never repeated, we had much 
pleasant talk together first and last. 

His end was very tragic, like that of a sensitive gifted 
man too much based on laughter. Having no good pros- 
pect of kirk promotion in Scotland (I think his Edinburgh 
resource had been mainly that of teaching under Mathe- 
matical Nichol for certain hours daily), he perhaps about 
a year after Irving went to Glasgow had accepted some 
offer to be Presbyterian chaplain and preacher to the 
Scotch in Bermuda, and lifted anchor thither with many 
regrets and s^ood wishes from us all. I did not corre- 
spond with him there, my own mood and posture being so 
dreary and empty. But before Irving left Glasgow, news 
came to me (from Irving I believe) that Frank, struck 
quite miserable and lame of heart and nerves by dyspep- 
sia and dispiritment, was home again, or on his way home 
to Dryfesdale, there to lie useless, Irving recommending 
me to do for him what kindness I could, and not remem- 
ber that he used to disbelieve and be ignorantly cruel in 
my own dyspeptic tribulations. This I did not fail of, 
nor was it burdensome, but otherwise, while near him in 
Annandale. 

Frank was far more wretched than I had been ; sunk 
in spiritual dubieties too, which I by that time was get- 
ting rid of. He had brought three young Bermuda gen- 
tlemen home with him as pupils (had been much a favour- 
ite in society there). With these in his rough farm-house, 
Belkat hill,* he settled himself to live. Farm was Jiis, but 
in the hands of a rough-spun sister and her ploughing hus- 

' Bell Top Hill, near Hook, head part of the pleasant vale of Dryfe. 



Il8 EDWARD IRVING. 

band, who perhaps was not over glad to see Frank return, 
with new potentiaHty of ownership if he Hked, which truly 
I suppose he never did. They had done some joinering, 
plank-flooring in the farm-house, which was weather-tight, 
newish though strait and dim, and there on rough rus- 
tic terms, perhaps with a little disappointment to the 
young gentlemen, Frank and his Bermudians lived, Frank 
himself for several years. He had a nimble quick pony, 
rode latterly (for the Bermudians did not stay above a 
year or two) much about among his cousinry of friends, 
always halting and baiting with me when it could be 
managed. I had at once gone to visit him, found Bell 
Top Hill on the new terms as interesting as ever. A 
comfort to me to administer some comfort, interesting 
even to compare dyspeptic notes. Besides, Frank by de- 
grees would kindle into the old coruscations, and talk as 
well as ever. I remember some of those visits to him, 
still more the lonely silent rides thither, as humanly im- 
pressive, wholesome, not unpleasant ; especially after my 
return from Buller tutorship, and my first London visit 
(in 1824), when I was at Hoddam Hill, idly high and dry 
like Frank (or only translating German romance, etc.) and 
had a horse of m.y own. Frank took considerably to my 
mother ; talked a great deal of his bitter Byronic scepti- 
cism to her, and seemed to feel like oil poured into his 
wounds her beautifully pious contradictions of him and 
it. " Really likes to be contradicted, poor Frank ! " she 
would tell me afterwards. He might be called a genuine 
bit of rustic dignity — modestly, frugally, in its simplest 
expression, gliding about among us there. This lasted 



EDWARD IRVING. II9 

till perhaps the beginning of 1826. I do not remember 
him at Scotsbrig ever. I suppose the lease of his farm 
may have run out that year, not renewed, and that he 
was now farther away. After my marriage, perhaps two 
years after it, from Craigenputtoch I wrote to him, but 
never got the least answer, never saw him or distinctly 
heard of him more. Indistinctly I did, with a shock, hear 
of him once, and then a second, a final time, thus. My 
brother Jamie,' riding to Moffat in 1828 or so, saw near 
some poor cottage (not a farm at all, a bare place for a 
couple of cows, perhaps it was a turnpike-keeper's cot- 
tage), not far from Moffat, a forlornly miserable-looking 
figure, walking languidly to and fro, parted from him by 
the hedge, whom in spite of this sunk condition he recog- 
nised clearly for Frank Dickson, who, however, took no 
notice of him. " Perhaps refuses to know me," thought 
Jamie; "they have lost their farm — sister and husband 
seem to have taken shelter here, and there is the poor 
gentleman and scholar Frank sauntering miserably with 
an old plaid over his head, slipshod in a pair of old clogs." 
That was Jamie's guess, which he reported to me ; and a 
few months after, grim whisper came, low but certain — 
no inquest of coroner there — that Frank was dead, and 
had gone in the Roman fashion. What other could he 
do now — the silent, valiant, though vanquished man ? He 
was hardly yet thirty-five, a man richer in gifts than nine- 
tenths of the vocal and notable are. I remember him 
with sorrow and affection, native-countryman Frank, and 
his little life. What a strange little island fifty years off; 

^ Youngest brother, ten years my junior. 



I20 EDWARD IRVING. 

sunny, homelike, pretty in the memory, yet with tragic 
thunders waiting it ! 

Irving's Glasgow news from the first were good. Ap- 
proved of, accepted by the great Doctor and his congre- 
gation, preaching heartily, labouring with the "visiting 
deacons " (Chalmers's grand parochial anti-pauperism ap- 
paratus much an object with the Doctor at this time), 
seeing and experiencing new things on all hands of him in 
his new wide element. He came occasionally to Edin- 
burgh on visit. I remember him as of prosperous aspect; 
a little more carefully, more clerically dressed than for- 
merly (ample black frock, a little longer skirted than the 
secular sort, hat of gravish breadth of brim, all very simple 
and correct). He would talk about the Glasgow Radical 
weavers, and their notable receptions of him and utter- 
ances to him while visiting their lanes ; Avas not copious 
upon his great Chalmers, though friendly in what he did 
say. All this of his first year must have been in 1820 or 
late in 1819 ; year 1819 comes back into my mind as the 
year of the Radical ''rising" in Glasgov/ ; and the kind 
of altogether imaginary '' fight " they attempted on Bonny 
Muir against the Yeomanry which had assembled from 
far and wide. A time of great rages and absurd terrors 
and expectations, a very fierce Radical and anti-Radical 
time. Edinburgh endlessly agitated by it all round me, 
not to mention Glasgow in the distance — gentry people 
full of zeal and foolish terror and fury, and looking dis- 
gustingly busy and important. Courier hussars would come 
in from the Glasgow region covered with mud, breathless, 
for head-quarters, as you took your walk in Princes 



EDWARD IRVING. 121 

Street ; and you would hear old powdered gentlemen in 
silver spectacles talking with low-toned but exultant voice 
about *' cordon of troops, sir" as you went along. The 
mass of the people, not the populace alone, had a quite 
different feeling, as if the danger from those West-country 
Radicals was small or imaginary and their grievances 
dreadfully real ; which was with emphasis my own private 
notion of it. One bleared Sunday morning, perhaps seven 
or eight A.M. I had gone out for my walk. At the riding- 
house in Nicholson Street was a kind of straggly group, 
or small crowd, with redcoats interspersed. Coming up 
I perceived it vv^as the ** Lothian Yeomanry," Mid or East 
I know not, just getting under way for Glasgow to be part 
of" the cordon." I halted a moment. They took their 
way, very ill ranked, not numerous or very dangerous- 
looking men of war ; but there rose from the little crowd 
by way of farewell cheer to them the strangest shout I 
have heard human throats utter, not very loud, or loud 
even for the small numbers ; but it said as plain as words, 
and with infinitely more emphasis of sincerity, " May the 
devil go with j(?//, ye peculiarly contemptible and dead to 
the distresses of your fellow-creatures." Another morn- 
ing, months after, spring and sun now come, and the 
** cordon" etc. all over, I met an advocate slightly of my 
acquaintance hurrying along musket in hand towards the 
Links, there to be drilled as item of the ** gentlemen" 
volunteers now afoot. "You should have the like of 
this" said he, cheerily patting his musket. " Hm, yes; 
but I haven't yet quite settled on which side " — which 
probably he hoped was quiz, though it really expressed 



122 EDWARD IRVING. 

my feeling. Irving too, and all of us juniors, had the 
same feeling in different intensities, and spoken of only to 
one another ; a sense that revolt against such a load of 
unveracities, impostures, and quietly inane formalities 
would one day become indispensable ; sense which had a 
kind of rash, false, and quasi-insolent joy in it ; mutiny, 
revolt, being a light matter to the young. 

Irving appeared to take great interest In his Glasgow 
visitings about among these poor weavers and free com- 
munings with them as man with man. He was altogether 
human we heard and could well believe ; he broke at once 
into sociality and frankness, would pick a potato from 
their pot and in eating it get at once into free and kindly 
terms. " Peace be with you here" was his entering sal- 
utation one time in some weaving shop which had politely 
paused and silenced itself on sight of him; ''peace be 
with you." "Ay, sir, if there's plenty wi't ! " said an 
angry little weaver who happened to be on the floor, and 
who began indignant response and remonstrance to the 
minister and his fine words. " Quite angry and fiery," as 
Irving described him to us ; a fine thoughtful brow, with 
the veins on it swollen and black, and the eyes under it 
sparkling and glistening, whom however he succeeded in 
pacifying, and parting with on soft terms. This was one 
of his anecdotes to us. I remember that fiery little weaver 
and his broad brow and swollen veins, a vanished figure 
of those days, as if I had myself seen him. 

By and by, after repeated invitations, which to me 
were permissions rather, the time came for my paying a 
return visit. I well remember the first visit and pieces 



EDWARD IRVING. 1 23 

of the others ; probably there were three or even four in 
all, each of them a real holiday to me. By steamer to 
Bo'ness and then by canal. Skipper of canal boat and 
two Glasgow scamps of the period, these are figures of 
the first voyage ; very vivid these^ the rest utterly out. 
I think I always went by Bo'ness and steam so far ^ coach 
the remainder of the road in all subsequent journeys. 
Irving lived in Kent Street, eastern end of Glasgow, 
ground floor, tolerably spacious room. I think he some- 
times gave up his bedroom (me the bad sleeper) and went 
out himself to some friend's house. David Hope (cousin 
of old Adam's, but much younger, an excellent guileless 
man and merchant) was warmly intimate and attached ; 
the like William Graham, of Burnswark, Annandale, a 
still more interesting character ; with both of whom I 
made or renewed acquaintance which turned out to be 
agreeable and lasting. These two were perhaps Irving's 
most domestic and practically trusted friends, but he had 
already many in the better Glasgow circles ; and in gen- 
erous liking and appreciation tended to excess, never to 
defect, with one and all of them. " Philosophers " called 
at Kent Street whom one did not find so extremely phil- 
osophical, though all were amiable and of polite and 
partly religious turn ; and in fact these revievv^s of Glas- 
gow in its streets, in its jolly Christmas dining-rooms and 
drawing-rooms, were cordial and instructive to me ; the 
solid style of comfort, freedom, and plenty was new to 
me in that degree. The Tontine (my first evening in 
Glasgow) was quite a treat to my rustic eyes ; several 
hundreds of such fine, clean opulent, and enviable or 



124 EDWARD IRVING. 

amiable-looking good Scotch gentlemen sauntering about 
in truthful gossip or solidly reading their newspapers. I 
remember the shining bald crowns and serene white heads 
of several, and the feeling, O forttmatos nimmm^ which 
they generally gave me. Irving was not with me on this 
occasion ; had probably left me there for some half-hour, 
and would come to pick me up again when ready. We 
made morning calls together too, not very many, and 
found once, I recollect, an exuberant bevy of young 
ladies which I (silently) took as sample of great and sin- 
gular privilege in my friend's way of life. Oftenest it was 
crotchety, speculative, semi-theological elderly gentlemen 
whom we met, with curiosity and as yet without weari- 
ness on my part, though of course their laughing chatting 
daughters would have been better. The Glasgow women 
of the young lady stamp seemed to me well-looking, 
clever enough, good-humoured : but I noticed (for my 
own behoof and without prompting of any kind) that they 
were not so well dressed as their Edinburgh sisters ; 
something flary, glary, colours too flagrant and ill-as- 
sorted, want of the harmonious transitions, neatnesses, 
and soft Attic art which I now recognised or remembered 
for the first time. 

Of Dr. Chalmers I heard a great deal ; naturally the 
continual topic, or one of them ; admiration universal, and 
as it seemed to me slightly wearisome, and a good deal in- 
discriminate and overdone, which probably (though we 
were dead silent on that head) was on occasions Irving's 
feeling too. But the great man was himself truly lovable, 
truly loved ; and nothing personally could be more mod- 



EDWARD IRVING. 12$ 

est, intent on his good industries, not on himself or his 
fame. Twice that I recollect I specially saw him ; once 
at his own house, to breakfast; company Irving, one 
Crosby, a young licentiate, with glaring eyes and no spec- 
ulation in them, who went afterwards to Birmingham, and 
thirdly myself. It was a cold vile smoky morning ; house 
and breakfast-room looked their worst in the dismal light. 
Doctor himself was hospitably kind, but spoke little and 
engaged none of us in talk. Oftcnest, I could see, he was 
absent, wandering in distant fields of abstruse character, 
to judge by the sorrowful glaze which came over his hon- 
est eyes and face. I was not ill pleased to get away, ig- 
notus, from one of whom I had gained no new knowledge. 
The second time was in a fine drawing-room (a ]\Ir. Par- 
ker's) in a rather solemn evening party, where the Doctor, 
perhaps bored by the secularities and trivialities elsewhere, 
put his chair beside mine in some clear space of floor, and 
talked earnestly for a good while on some scheme he had 
for proving Christianity by its visible fitness for human 
nature. " All written in us already," he said, ** in sym- 
pathetic ink. Bible awakens it; and you can read." I 
listened respectfully, not with any real conviction, only 
with a clear sense of the geniality and goodness of the 
man. I never saw him again till within a few months of 
his death, when he called here, and sate with us an hour, 
very agreeable to Jier and to me after the long abeyance. 
She had been with him once on a short tour in the High- 
lands ; me too he had got an esteem of — liked the " Crom- 
well " especially, and Cromwell's self ditto, which I hardly 
reckoned creditable of him. He did not speak of that, 



126 EDWARD IRVING. 

nor of the Free Kirk war, though I gave him a chance of 
that which he soon softly let drop. The now memorablest 
point to me was of Painter Wilkie, who had been his fa- 
miliar in youth, and whom he seemed to me to understand 
well. "Painter's language," he said, "was stinted and 
difficult." Wilkie had told him how in painting his Rc7it 
Day he thought long, and to no purpose, by what means 
he should signify that the sorrowful woman with the chil- 
dren there, had left no husband at home, but was a widow 
under tragical self management ; till one morning, pushing 
along the Strand, he met a small artisan farhily going evi- 
dently on excursion, and in one of their hands or pockets 
somewhere was visible the house-key. " That will do," 
thought Wilkie, and prettily introduced the house-key as 
coral in the poor baby's mouth, just drawn from poor 
mammy's pocket, to keep her unconscious little orphan 
peaceable. He warmly agreed with me in thinking 
Wilkie a man of real genius, real vivacity and simplicity. 
Chalmers was himself very beautiful to us during that 
hour, grave — not too grave — earnest, cordial face and fig- 
ure very little altered, only the head had grown white, and 
in the eyes and features you could read something of a 
serene sadness, as if evening and star-crowned night were 
coming on, and the hot noises of the day growing unex- 
pectedly insignificant to one. We had little thought this 
would be the last of Chalmers ; but in a few weeks after 
he suddenly died . . . He was a man of much natural 
dignity, ingenuity, honesty, and kind affection, as well as 
sound intellect and imagination. A very eminent viva- 
city lay in him, which could rise to complete impetuosity 



EDWARD IRVING. 12/ 

(growing conviction, passionate eloquence, fiery play of 
heart and head) all in a kind of rustic type, one might say, 
though wonderfully true and tender. He had a burst of 
genuine fun too, I have heard, of the same honest but 
most plebeian broadly natural character ; his laugh was a 
hearty low guffaw ; and his tones in preaching would rise 
to the piercingly pathetic — no preacher ever went so into 
one's heart. He was a man essentially of little culture, 
of narrow sphere, all his life ; such an intellect professing 
to be educated, and yet so ill read, so ignorant in all that 
lay beyond the horizon in place or in time, I have almost 
nowhere met with. A man capable of much soaking in- 
dolence, lazy brooding and do-nothingism, as the first stage 
of his life well indicated ; a man thought to be timid al- 
most to the verge of cowardice, yet capable of impetuous 
activity and blazing audacity, as his latter years showed. 

I suppose there will never again be such a preacher in 
any Christian church. 

[A slip from a newspaper is appended here, with a note 
to it in Carlyle's hand. 

'* It is a favourite speculation of mine that if spared to 
sixty we then enter on the seventh decade of human life, 
and that this if possible should be turned into the Sab- 
bath of our earthly pilgrimage and spent sabbatically, as 
if on the shores of an eternal world, or in the outer courts 
as it were of the temple that is above, the tabernacle in 
Heaven. What enamours me all the more of this idea is 
the retrospect of my mother's widowhood. I long, if 
God should spare me, for such an old age as she enjoyed, 
spent as if at the gate of heaven, and with such a fund of 



128 EDWARD IRVING. 

inward peace and hope as made her nine years' widow- 
hood a perfect feast and foretaste of the blessedness that 
awaits the righteous." — Dr. Chalmers. 

Carlyle writes : 

'* Had heard it before from Thomas Erskine (of Lin- 
lathen), Avith pathetic comment as to what Chalmers's 
own sabbath-decade had been."] 

Irving's discourses were far more opulent in ingenious 
thought than Chalmers's, which indeed were usually the 
triumphant on-rush oi one idea with its satellites and sup- 
porters. But Irving's wanted in definite Jiead and back- 
bone^ so that on arriving you might see clearly where and 
how. That was mostly a defect one felt in .traversing 
those grand forest-avenues of his with their multifari- 
ous outlooks to right and left. He had many thoughts 
pregnantly expressed, but they did not tend all one way. 
The reason was there were in him infinitely more thoughts 
than in Chalmers, and he took far less pains in setting 
them forth. The uniform custom was, he shut himself up 
all Saturday, became invisible all that day ; and had his 
sermon ready before going to bed. Sermon an hour long 
or more ; it could not be done in one day, except as a 
kind of extempore thing. It flowed along, not as a swift 
flowing river, but as a broad, deep, and bending or 
meandering one. Sometimes it left on you the im- 
pression almost of a fine noteworthy lake. Noteworthy 
always ; nobody could mistake it for the discourse of 
other than an uncommon man. Originality and truth of 
purpose were undeniable in it, but there was withal, both 
in the matter and the manner, a something which might 



EDWARD IRVING. 1 29 

be suspected of affectation, a noticeable preference and 
search for striking quaint and ancient locutions ; a style 
modelled on the Miltonic old Puritan ; something too in 
the delivering which seemed elaborate and of forethought, 
or might be suspected of being so. He (still) always 
read, but not in the least slavishly; and made abundant 
rather strong gesticulations in the right places ; voice one 
of the finest and powerfullest, but not a power quite on 
the heart as Chalmers's was, which you felt to be coming 
direct /r^;;2 the heart. Irving's preaching was accordingly 
a thing not above criticism to the Glasgowites, and it got 
a good deal on friendly terms, as well as admiration 
plenty, in that tempered form ; not often admiration pure 
and simple, as was now always Chalmers's lot there. 
Irving no doubt secretly felt the difference, and could 
have wished it otherwise ; but the generous heart of him 
was incapable of envying any human excellence, and 
instinctively would either bow to it and to the rewards 
of it withal, or rise to loyal emulation of it and them. He 
seemed to be much liked by many good people ; a fine 
friendly and wholesome element I thought it for him ; 
and the criticisms going, in connection with the genuine 
admiration going, might be taken as handsomely 7iear 
the mark. 

To me, for his sake, his Glasgow friends were very 
good, and I liked their ways (as I might easily do) much 
better than some I had been used to. A romance of 
novelty lay in them too. It was the first time I had 
looked into opulent burgher life in any such complete- 
ness and composed solidity as here. We went to Paisley 
9 



I30 EDWARD IRVING. 

several times, to certain " Carliles " (so they spelt their 
name ; Annan people of a century back), rich enough old 
men of religious moral turn, who received me as "a 
cousin ; " their daughters good if not pretty, and one 
of the sons (Warrand Carlile, who afterwards became a 
clergyman) not quite uninteresting to me for some years 
coming. He married the youngest sister of Edward 
Irving, and I think is still preaching somewhere in the 
West Indies. Wife long since died, but one of their 
sons, "Gavin Carlile" (or now Carlyle), a Free Kirk 
minister here in London, editing his uncle's select works 
just now (1866). David Hope, of Glasgow, always a little 
stuck to me afterwards, an innocent cheerful Nathaniel, 
ever ready to oblige. The Hke much more emphatically 
did William Graham of Burnswark, whom I first met in 
the above city under Irving's auspices, and who might in 
his way be called a friend both to Irving and me so long 
as his life lasted, which was thirty odd years longer. 
Other conquests of mine in Glasgow I don't recollect. 
Graham of Burnswark perhaps deserves a paragraph. 

Graham was turned of fifty when I first saw him, a 
lumpish, heavy, but stirring figure ; had got something 
lamish about one of the knees or ankles which gave a 
'certain rocking motion to his gait ; firm jocund affection- 
ate face, rather reddish with good cheer, eyes big, blue 
and laughing, nose defaced with snufif, fine bald broad- 
browed head, ditto almost always with an ugly brown 
scratch wig. He was free of hand and of heart, laughed 
with sincerity at not very much of fun, liked widely yet 
with some selection, and was widely liked. The history 



EDWARD IRVING. 131 

of him was curious. His father, first some small farmer 
in " Corrie Water" perhaps, was latterly for many years 
(I forget whether as farmer or as shepherd, but guess the 
former) stationary at Burnswark, a notable tabular hill, 
of no great height, but detached a good way on every 
side, far seen almost to the shores of Liverpool, indeed 
commanding all round the whole of that large i-^//r^r, fifty 
to thirty miles in radius, the brother point of which is 
now called Gretna (*' Cretan How," Big Hollow, at the 
head of Sohvay Frith) ; a Burnswark beautiful to look on 
and much noted from of old. Has a glorious Roman 
camp on the south flank of it, *' the best preserved in 
Britain except one " (says General Roy) ; velvet sward 
covering the whole, but trenches, praetorium (three conic 
mounds) etc. not altered otherwise ; one of the finest lim- 
pid wells within it ; and a view to Liverpool as was said, 
and into Tynedale, to the Cumberland and even York- 
shire mountains on the one side, and on the other into 
the ]\Ioftat ditto and the Selkirkshire and Eskdale. 

The name ''Burnswark" is probably Birrenswark (or 
fortification workV Three Roman stations, with Carlisle 
(Caer Lewel, as old as King Solomon) for mother : Neth- 
erbie, Middlebie, and Owerbie (or Upperby) in Eskdale. 
The specific Roman town of Middlebie is about half a 
mile below the Kirk (i.e. eastward of it^ and is called by 
the country people "the Birrens "(i.e. the Scrags or 
Haggles, I should think), a place lying all in dimples and 
wrinkles, with ruined houses if you dig at all, grassy but 
inarable part of which is still kept sacred /;/ lea by " the 
Duke " (of Queensberry, now of Buccleuch and Queens- 



132 EDWARD IRVING. 

berry) while the rest has been all dug to powder in the 
last sixty or seventy years by the adjoining little lairds. 
Many altars, stone figures, tools, axes, etc. were got out 
of the dug part, and it used to be one of the tasks of my 
boyhood to try what I could do at reading the inscrip- 
tions found there ; which was not much, nor almost ever 
wholly enough, though the country folk were thankful for 
my little Latin faithfully applied, like the light of a damp 
windlestraw to them in what was total darkness. The 
fable went that from Birrens to Birrenswark, two and a 
half miles, there ran a ''subterranean passage," complete 
tunnel, equal to carts perhaps, but nobody pretended even 
to have seen a trace of it, or indeed did believe it. 

In my boyhood, passing Birrens for the first time, I 
noticed a small conduit (cloaca, I suppose) abruptty end- 
ing or issuing in the then recent precipice which had been 
left by those diggers, and recollect nothing more, except 
my own poor awe and wonder at the strange scene, 
strange face to face vestige of the vanished seons. The 
Caledonian Railway now screams and shudders over this 
dug part of Birrens ; William Graham', whom I am (too 
idly) writing of, was born at the north-east end of Burns- 
wark, and passed in labour, but in health, frugality, and 
joy, the first twenty-five years of his life. 

Graham's father and mother seem to have been of the 
best kind of Scottish peasant ; he had brothers two or 
perhaps three, of whom William was the youngest, who 
were all respected in their state, and who all successively 
emigrated to America on the following slight first-cause. 
John Graham, namely the eldest of the brothers, had been 



EDWARD IRVING. 1 33 

balloted for the Militia (Dumfriesshire Militia), and on 
private consideration with himself preferred expatriation 
to soldiering, and quietly took ship to push his fortune in 
the New World instead. John's adventures, which prob- 
ably were rugged enough, are not on record for me ; 
only that in no great length of time he found something 
of success, a solid merchant's clerkship or the like, with 
outlooks towards merchant's business of his own one day ; 
and invited thither one by one all his brothers to share 
with him or push like him there. Philadelphia was the 
place, at least the ultimate place, and the firm of Graham 
Brothers " gradually rose to be a considerable and well- 
reputed house in that city. William, probably some fif- 
teen years junior of John, was the last brother that went ; 
after him their only sister, parents having now died at 
Burnswark, was sent for also, and kept house for William 
or for another of the bachelor brothers — one at least of 
them had v/edded and has left Pennsylvanian Grahams. 
William continued bachelor for life ; and this only sister 
returned ultimately to Annandale, and was William's 
house manager there. I remember her well, one of the 
amiablest of old maids ; kind, true, modestly polite to the 
very heart ; and in such a curious style of polite culture ; 
Pennsylvanian Yankee grafted on Annandale Scotch. 
Used to " expect " instead of " suppose," would '' guess " 
now and then, and commonly said Pastor (which she pro- 
nounced '' Paustor ") to signify clergyman or minister. 

The Graham Brothers house growing more and more 
prosperous and opulent in Philadelphia, resolved at last 
to have a branch in Glasgow (year 1814 or so) and de- 



134 EDWARD IRVING. 

spatched William thither, whose coming I dimly remem- 
ber was heard of in Annandale by his triumphant purchase 
for himself in fee simple of the farm and hill of Burnswark^ 
which happened to come into the market then. His 
tradings and observations in Glasgow were extensive, 
not unskilful that I heard of, and were well looked on, as 
he himself still more warmly was, but at length (perhaps 
a year or more before my first sight of him) some grand 
cargo from or to Philadelphia, some whole fleet of car- 
goes, all mostly of the same commodity, had by sudden 
change of price during the voyage ruinously misgone, and 
the fine house of Graham Brothers came to the ground. 
William was still in the throes of settlement, just about 
quitting his fine well-appointed mansion in Vincent 
Street, in a cheerfully stoical humour, and only clinging 
with invincible tenacity to native Burnswark, which of 
course was no longer his except on bond with securities, 
with interest, etc., all of excessive extent, his friends said, 
but could not persuade him, so dear to his heart was that 
native bit of earth, with the fond improvements, planting 
and the like, which he had begun upon it. 

Poor Graham kept iron hold of Burnswark, ultimately 
as plain tenant ; good sheep farm at a fair rent ; all at- 
tempts otherwise, and they were many and strenuous, 
having issued in non-success, and the hope of ever recov- 
ering himself, or it, being plainly futile. Graham never 
merchanted more ; was once in America on exploratory 
visit, where his brothers were in some degree set up 
agai-n, but had no 8,000/. to spare for his Burnswark. 
He still hung a httle to Glasgow, tried various things. 



EDWARD IRVING. 135 

rather of a *' projector" sort, all of which miscarried, till 
happily he at length ceased visiting Glasgow, and grew 
altogether rustic, a successful sheep-farmer at any rate, 
fat, cheery, happy, and so for his last twenty years rode 
visiting about among the little lairds of an intelligent 
turn, who liked him well, but not with entire acquiescence 
in all the copious quasi-intelligent talk he had. Irving 
had a real love for him, with silent deductions in the un- 
important respects ; he an entire loyalty and heart-devo- 
tedness to Irving. Me also he took up in a very warm 
manner, and for the first few years was really pleasant 
and of use to me, especially in my then Annandale sum- 
mers. Through him I made acquaintance with a really 
intellectual modest circle, or rather pair of people, a Mr. 
and Mrs. Johnston, at their place called Grange, on the 
edge of the hill country, seven or eight miles from my 
father's. Mrs. Johnston was a Glasgow lady, of fine cul- 
ture, manners, and intellect ; one of the smallest voices, 
and most delicate, gently smiling figure ; had been in 
London, etc. Her husband was by birth laird of this 
pretty Grange, and had modestly withdrawn to it, finding 
merchanthood in Glasgow ruinous to weak health. The 
elegance, the perfect courtesy, the simple purity and 
beauty I found in both these good people, was an authen- 
tic attraction and profit to me in those years, and I still 
remember them and the bright little environment of them, 
with a kind of pathetic affection. I as good as lost them 
on my leaving Annandale. Mr. Johnston soon after 
died ; and with Mrs. Johnson there could only be at rare 



136 EDWARD IRVING. 

intervals a fljnng call, sometimes only the attempt at such, 
which amounted to little. 

Graham also I practically more and more lost from 
that epoch (1826), ever memorable to me otherwise. He 
hung about me studiously, and with unabating good-will, 
on my Annandale visits to my mother, to whom he was 
ever attentive and respectful for my sake and her own. 
Dear good mother ! best of mothers ! He pointed out 
the light of her " end window, '' gable window, one dark 
night to me, as I convoyed him from Scotsbrig. ''Will 
there ever be in the world for you a prettier light than 
that ? " He was once or more with us at Craigenput- 
toch, ditto at London, and wrote long letters, not un- 
pleasant to read and burn. But his sphere was shrinking 
more and more into dark safety and monstrous rusticity, 
mine the reverse in respect of safety and otherwise — nay, 
at length his faculties were getting hebetated, wrapt in 
lazy eupeptic fat. The last time I ever, strictly speak- 
ing, saw him (for he was grown more completely stupid 
and oblivious every subsequent time), was at the ending 
of my mother's funeral (December 1853), day bitterly 
cold, heart bitterly sad, at the gate of Ecclefechan kirk- 
yard. He was sitting in his gig just about to go, I ready 
to mount for Scotsbrig, and in a day more for London ; 
he gazed on me with his big innocent face, big heavy 
eyes, as if half conscious, half-frozen in the cold, and we 
shook hands nearly in silence. 

In the Irving Glasgow time, and for awhile afterwards, 
there went on at Edinburgh too a kind of cheery visiting 
and messaging from these good Graham-Hope people. 



EDWARD IRVING. 137 

I do not recollect the visits as peculiarly successful, none 
of them except one, which was on occasion of George 
IV. 's famed ''visit to Edinburgh," when Graham and 
Hope (I think both of them together), occupied my rooms 
with grateful satisfaction. I myself not there. I had 
grown disgusted with the fulsome '* loyalty " of all classes 
in Edinburgh towards this approaching George Fourth 
visit ; whom though called and reckoned a " king," I in 
my private radicalism of mind could consider only as a — 
what shall I call him ? and loyalty was not the feeling I 
had towards any part of the phenomenon. At length 
reading one day in a public placard from the magistrates 
(of which there had been several), that on His Majesty's 
advent it was expected that everybody would be carefully 
well-dressed, "black coat and white duck trousers," if at 
all convenient, I grumbled to myself, *' scandalous 
flunkeys ! I, if I were changing my dress at all, should 
incline rather to be in white coat and black trousers ; " 
but resolved rather to quit the city altogether, and be ab- 
sent and silent in such efflorescence of the flunkeyisms, 
which I was — for a week or more in Annandale, at Kirk- 
christ with the Churches in Galloway ; ride to Lochin- 
brack Well by Kenmore Lake, etc., how vivid still ! and 
found all comfortably rolled away at my return to Edin- 
burgh. 

It was in one of those visits by Irving himself/ without 
any company, that he took me out to Haddington (as re- 
corded elsewhere), to what has since been so momentous 
through all my subsequent life. We walked and talked 

^ June 1821. 



138 EDWARD IRVING. 

a good sixteen miles in the sunny summer afternoon. 
He took me round by Athelstanford ('' Elshinford ") par- 
ish, where John Home wrote his " Douglas " in case of 
any enthusiasm for Home or it, which I secretly had not. 
We leapt the solitary kirkyard wall, and found close by us 
the tombstone of " old Skirring," a more remarkable per- 
son, author of the strangely vigorous doggrel ballad on 
** Preston Pans Battle " (and the ditto answer to a military 
challe7ige which ensued thereupon), " one of the most 
athletic and best natured of men," said his epitaph. This 
is nearly all I recollect of the journey "; the end of it, and 
what I saw there, will be memorable to me while life or 
thoucrht endures. Ah me ! ah me ! — I think there had 
been before this on Irving's own part some movements of 
negotiation over to Kirkcaldy for release there, and of 
hinted hope towards Haddington, which was so infinitely 
miserable ! and something (as I used to gather long after- 
wards) might have come of it had not Kirkcaldy been so 
peremptory and stood by its bond (as spoken or as writ- 
ten), '* bond or utter ruin, sir ! " upon which Irving had 
honourably submitted and resigned himself. He seemed 
to be quite composed upon the matter by this time.^ I 
remember in an inn at Haddington that first night a little 
passage. We had just seen in the minister's house (whom 
Irving was to preach for), a certan shining Miss Augusta, 
tall, shapely, airy, giggly, but a consummate fool, whom 
I have heard called ''Miss Disgusta" by the satirical. 
We w^ere now in our double-bedded room, George Inn, 

* Caiiyle was mistaken here. Irving's hopes at this time were at their - 
brightest. 



EDWARD IRVING. 139 

Haddington, stripping, or perhaps each already in his 
bed, when Irving jocosely said to me, ** What would you 
take to marry Miss Augusta now ? " " Not for an entire 
and perfect chrysolite the size of this terraqueous globe," 
answered I at once ; with hearty laughter from Irving. 
" And what would you take to marry Miss Jeannie, 
think you ? " *' Hah, I should not be so hard to deal with 
there I should imagine ! " upon which another bit of 
laugh from Irving, and we composedly went to sleep. I 
was supremely dyspeptic and out of health during those 
three or four days, and they were the beginning of a new 
life to me. 

The notablest passage in my Glasgow visits was prob- 
ably the year before this Edinburgh-Haddington one on 
Irving's part. I was about quitting Edinburgh for An- 
nandale, and had come round by Glasgow on the road 
home. I was utterly out of health as usual, but had 
otherwise had my enjoyments. We had come to Paisley 
as finale, and were lodging pleasantly with the Carliles, 
Warrand Carlile, hearing I had to go by Muirkirk in Ayr- 
shire, and Irving to return to Glasgow, suggested a con- 
voy of me by Irving and himself, furthered by a fine 
riding horse of Warrand's, on the ride-and-tie principle. 
Irving had cheerfully consented. *' You and your horse 
as far as you can ; I will go on to Drumclog Moss with 
Carlyle ; then turn home for Glasgow in good time, he on 
to Muirkirk which will be about a like distance for him." 
** Done, done ! " To me of course nothing could be wel- 
comer than this improvised convoy, upon which we en- 
tered accordingly ; early A.M., a dry brisk April day, and 



140 EDWARD IRVING. 

one still full of strange dim interest to me. I never rode 
and tied (especially with three) before or since, but recol- 
lect we had no difficulty with it. 

Warrand had settled that we should breakfast with a 
Rev. Mr. French some fifteen miles off, after which he 
and horse would return. I recollect the Mr. French, a fat 
apoplectic-looking old gentleman, in a room of very low 
ceiling, but plentifully furnished with breakfast materials ; 
who was very kind to us, and seemed glad and ready to 
be invaded in this sudden manner by articulate speaking 
young men. Good old soul ! I never saw him or heard 
mention of him again. 

Drumclog Moss (after several hours fallen vacant and 
wholly dim) is the next object that survives, and Irving 
and I sitting by ourselves under the silent bright skies 
among the "peat-hags" of Drumclog with a world ail 
silent round us. These peat-hags are still pictured in me ; 
brown bog, all pitted and broken into heathy remnants 
and bare abrupt wide holes, four or five feet deep, mostly 
dry at present ; a flat wilderness of broken bog, of quag- 
mire not to be trusted (probably wetter in old days there, 
and wet still in rainy seasons). Clearly a good place for 
Cameronian preaching, and dangerously difficult for Cla- 
verse and horse soldiery if the suffering remnant had a few 
old muskets among them ! Scott's novels had given the 
Claverse skirmish here, which all Scotland knew of al- 
ready, a double interest in those days. I know not that 
we talked much of this ; but we did of many things, per- 
haps more confidentially than ever before. A colloquy the 
sum of which is still mournfully beautiful to me, though 



I 



EDWARD IRVING. 14 1 

the details are gone. I remember us sitting on the brow 
of a peat-hag, the sun shining, our own voices the one 
sound. Far, far away to the westward over our brown 
horizon, towered up white and visible at the many miles 
of distance a high irregular pyramid. ** Ailsa Craig," 
we at once guessed, and thought of the seas and oceans 
over yonder. But we did not long dwell on that. We 
seem to have seen no human creature after French (though 
of course our very road would have to be enquired after) ; 
to have had no bother and no need of human assistance 
or society, not even of refection, French's breakfast per- 
fectly sufficing us. The talk had grown ever friendlier, 
more interesting. At length the declining sun said 
plainly, you must part. We sauntered slowly into the 
Glasgow-Muirkirk highway. Masons were building at a 
wayside cottage near by, or were packing up on ceasing 
for the day. We leant our backs to a dry stone fence 
(** stone dike," dry stone wall, very common in that coun- 
try), and looking into the western radiance, continued in 
talk yet a while, loth both of us to go. It was just here, 
as the sun was sinking, Irving actually drew from me by 
degrees, in the softest manner, the confession that I did 
not think as he of the Christian religion, and that it was 
vain for me to expect I ever could or should. This, if 
this was so, he had pre-engaged to take well of me, like an 
elder brother, if I would be frank with him. And right loy- 
ally he did so, and to the end of his life we needed no con- 
cealments on that head, which was really a step gained. 

The sun was about setting when we turned away each 
on his own path. Irving would have had a good space 



142 EDWARD IRVING. 

further to go than I (as now occurs to me), perhaps fifteen 
or seventeen miles, and would not be in Kent Street till 
towards midnij^ht. But he feared no amount of walking, 
enjoyed it rather, as did I in those young years. I felt 
sad, but affectionate and good, in my clean, utterly quiet 
little inn at Muirkirk, which, and my feelings in it, I still 
well remember. An innocent little Glasgow youth (young 
bagman on his first journey, I supposed) had talked awhile 
with mQ in the otherwise solitary little sitting-room. At 
parting he shook hands, and with something of sorrow in 
his tone said, *' Good night, I shall not see yoii again." 
A unique experience of mine in inns. 

I was off next morning by four o'clock, Muirkirk, ex- 
cept possibly its pillar of furnace smoke, all sleeping 
round me, concerning which, I remembered in the silence 
something I had heard from my father in regard to this 
famed Iron village (famed long before, but still rural, nat- 
ural, not all in a roaring state, which as I imagine, it is 
now). This is my father's picture of an incident he had 
got to know and never could forget. On the platform of 
one of the furnaces a solitary man (stoker if they call him 
so) was industriously minding his business, now throwing 
in new fuel and ore, now poking the white-hot molten 
mass that was already in. A poor old maniac woman 
silently joined him and looked, whom also he was used to 
and did not mind. But after a little, his back being to- 
wards the furnace mouth, he heard a strange thump or 
cracking puff; and turning suddenly, the poor old maniac 
woman was not there, and on advancing to the furnace- 
edge he. saw the figure of her red-hot, semi-transparent, 



EDWARD IRVING. 143 

floating as ashes on the fearful element for some mo- 
ments ! This had printed itself on my father's brain ; 
twice perhaps I had heard it from him, which was rare, 
nor will it ever leave my brain either. 

That day was full of mournful interest to me in the 
waste moors, there in bonny Nithsdale (my first sight of 
it) in the bright but palish, almost pathetic sunshine and 
utter loneliness. At eight P.M. I got well to Dumfries, 
the longest walk I ever made, fifty-four miles in one day. 

Irving's visits to Annandale, one or two every sum- 
mer, while I spent summers (for cheapness sake and 
health's sake) in solitude at my father's there, were the 
sabbath times of the season to me ; by far the beautifullest 
days, or rather the only beautiful I had ! Unwearied 
kindness, all that tenderest anxious affection could do, 
was always mine from my incomparable mother, from my 
dear brothers, little clever active sisters, and from every- 
one, brave father in his tacit grim way not at all excepted. 
There was good talk also ; with mother at evening tea, 
often on theology (where I did at length contrive, by 
judicious endeavour, to speak piously and agi'eeably to 
one so pious, ivithotit unveracity on my part). Nay it 
was a kind of interesting exercise to wind softly out of 
those anxious affectionate cavils of her dear heart on such 
occasions, and get real sympathy, real assent under bor- 
rowed forms. Oh, her patience with me ! oh, her never- 
tiring love ! Blessed be *' poverty" which was never in- 
digence in any form, and which has made all that tenfold 
more dear and sacred to me ! With my two eldest 
brothers also, Alick and John, who were full of ingenuous 



144 EDWARD IRVING. 

curiosity, and had (especially John) abundant intellect, 
there was nice talking as we roamed about the fields in 
gloaming time after their work was done ; and I recollect 
noticing (though probably it happened various times) that 
little Jean (" Craw " as we called her, she alone of us not 
being blond but blackhaired) one of the cleverest children 
I ever saw (then possibly about six or seven) had joined 
us for her private behoof, and was assiduously trotting at 
my knee, cheek, eyes, and ear assiduously turned up to 
me ! Good little soul ! I thought it and think it very 
pretty of her. She alone of them had nothing to do with 
milking ; I suppose her charge would probably be ducks 
or poultry, all safe to bed now, and was turning her bit 
of leisure to this account instead of another. She was 
hardly longer than my leg by the whole head and neck. 
There was a younger sister (Jenny) who is now in Canada, 
of far inferior speculative intellect to Jean, but who has 
proved to have (we used to think), superior housekeeping 
faculties to hers. The same may be said of Mary the 
next elder to Jean. Both these, especially Jenny, got 
husbands, and have dexterously and loyally made the 
most of them and their families and households. Hen- 
ning, of Hamilton, Canada West ; Austin, of the Gill, 
Annan, are now the names of these two. Jean is Mrs. 
Aitken, of Dumfries, still a clever, speculative, ardent, 
affectionate and discerning woman, but much zersplittert 
by the cares of life ; zersplittert ; steadily denied acumi- 
nation or definite consistency and direction to a point ; a 
"tragedy" often repeated in this poor world, the more 
the pity for the world too ! 



J 



EDWARD IRVING. 145 

All this was something, but in all this I gave more 
than I got, and it left a sense of isolation, of sadness ; as 
the rest of my imprisoned life all with emphasis did. I 
kept daily studious, reading diligently what few books 
I could get, learning what was possible, German etc. 
Sometimes Dr. Brewster turned me to account (on most 
frugal terms always) in wretched httle translations, com- 
pilations, which were very welcome too, though never 
other than dreary. Life was all dreary, "eerie" (Scot- 
tice), tinted with the hues of imprisonment and impossibil- 
ity ; hope practically not there, only obstinacy, and a grim 
steadfastness to strive without hope as with. To all which 
Irving's advent was the pleasant (temporary) contradiction 
and reversal, like sunrising to night, or impenetrable fog, 
and its spectralities ! The time of his coming, the how 
and when of his movements and possibilities, were always 
known to me beforehand. On the set day I started forth 
better dressed than usual, strode along for Annan which 
lay pleasantly in sight all the way (seven miles or more 
from Mainhill). In the woods of Mount Annan I would 
probably meet Irving strolling towards me ; and then 
what a talk for the three miles down that bonny river's 
bank, no sound but our own voices amid the lullaby of 
waters and the twittering of birds ! We were sure to 
have several such walks, whether the first day or not, and 
I remember none so well as some (chiefly ^;/^ which is not 
otherwise of moment) in that fine locality. 

I generally stayed at least one night, on several occa- 
sions two or even more, and I remember no visits with as 
pure and calm a pleasure. Annan was then at its culmi- 



146 EDWARD IRVING. 

nating point, a fine, bright, self-confident little town (gone 
now to dimness, to decay, and almost grass on its streets 
by railway transit). Bits of travelling notabilities were 
sometimes to be found alighted there. Edinburgh peo- 
ple, Liverpool people, with whom it was interesting for 
the recluse party to " measure minds " for a little, and be 
on your best behaviour, both as to matter and to manner. 
Musical Thomson (memorable, more so than venerable, 
as the pubhsher of Burns's songs) him I saw one evening, 
sitting in the reading-room, a clean-brushed, common- 
place old gentleman in scratch wig, whom we spoke a 
few words to and took a good look of. Two young Liv- 
erpool brothers, Nelson their name, scholars just out of 
Oxford, were on visit one time in the Irving circle, spe- 
cially at Provost Dixon's, Irving's brother-in-law's. These 
were very interesting to me night after night ; handsome, 
intelHgent, polite young men, and the first of their species 
I had seen. Dixon's on other occasions was usually my 
lodging, and Irving's along with me, but would not be on 
this (had I the least remembrance on that head), except 
that I seem to have been always beautifully well lodged, 
and that Mrs. Dixon, Irving's eldest sister, and very Hke 
him mimes the bad eye, and plus a fine dimple on the 
bright cheek, was always beneficent and fine to me. 
Those Nelsons I never saw again, but have heard once 
in late years that they never did anything, but continued 
ornamentally lounging with Liverpool as headquarters ; 
which seemed to be something like the prophecy one 
might have gathered from those young aspects in the 
Annandale visit, had one been intent to scan them. A 



EDWARD IRVING. 147 

faded Irish dandy once picked up by us is also present ; 
one fine clear morning Irving and I found this figure 
lounging about languidly on the streets. Irving made up 
to him, invited him home to breakfast, and home he po- 
litely and languidly went with us ; " bound for some cat- 
tle fair," he told us, Norwich perhaps, and waiting for 
some coach ; a parboiled, insipid "agricultural dandy" or 
old fogie, of Hibernian type ; wore a superfine light green 
frock, snow-white corduroys ; age about fifty, face col- 
ourless, crow-footed, feebly conceited ; proved to have 
nothing in him, but especially nothing bad, and we had 
been human to him. Breakfast this morning, I remem- 
ber, was at Mrs. Ferguson's (Irving's third sister ; there 
were four in all, and there had been three brothers, but 
were now only two, the youngest and the eldest of the 
set). Mrs. F.'s breakfast — tea — was praised by the Hi- 
bernian pilgrim and well deserved it. 

Irving was generally happy in those little Annandale 
** sunny islets " of his year; happier perhaps than ever 
elsewhere. All was quietly flourishing in this his natal 
element ; father's house neat and contented ; ditto ditto, 
or perhaps blooming out a little farther, those of his 
daughters, all nestled close to it in place withal ; a very 
prettily thriving group of things and objects in their lim- 
ited, in their safe seclusion ; and Irving was silently but 
visibly in the hearts of all the flower and crowning jewel 
of it. He was quiet, cheerful, genial. Soul unruffled 
and clear as a mirror, honestly loving and loved all round. 
His time too was so short, every moment valuable. Alas, 
and in so few years after, ruin's ploughshare had run 



148 EDWARD IRVING. 

through it all, and it was prophesying to you, " Behold, 
in a little while the last trace of me will not be here, and 
I shall have vanished tragically and fled into oblivion and 
darkness like a bright dream." As is long since mourn- 
fully the fact, when one passes, pilgrim-Hke, those old 
houses still standing there, which I have once or twice 
done. 

Our dialogues did not turn very much or long on per- 
sonal topics, but wandered wide over the world and its 
ways — new men of the travelling conspicuous sort whom 
he had seen in Glasgow, new books sometimes, my scope 
being short in that respect ; all manner of interesting ob- 
jects and discoursings ; but to me the personal, when 
they did come in course, as they were sure to do now and 
then in fit proportion, were naturally the gratefullest of 
all. Irving's voice was to me one of blessedness and new 
hope. He would not hear of my gloomy prognostica- 
tions ; all nonsense that I never should get out of these 
obstructions and impossibilities ; the real impossibility 
was that such a talent etc. should not cut itself clear one 
day. He was very generous to everybody's " talent," 
especially to mine ; which to myself was balefully dubious, 
nothing but bare scaffold poles, weatherbeaten corner- 
pieces of perhaps a *' potential talent," even visible to me. 
His predictions about what I was to be flew into the com- 
pletely incredible ; and however welcome, I could only 
rank them as devout imaginations and quiz them away. 
*' You will see now," he would say, '* one day we two will 
shake hands across the brook, you as first in literature, I 
as first in divinity, and people will say, ' Both these fel- 



I 



EDWARD IRVING. I49 

lows are from Annandale. Where is Annandale ? ' " 
This I have heard him say more than once, always in a 
laughing way, and with self-mockery enough to save it 
from being barrenly vain. He was very sanguine, I much 
the reverse ; and had his consciousness of power, and his 
generous ambitions and forecastings. Never ungenerous, 
never ignoble ; only an enemy could have called him 
vain, but perhaps an enemy could or at least would, and 
occasionally did. His pleasure in being loved by others 
was very great, and this if you looked well was manifest 
in him when the case offered ; never more or worse than 
this in any case, and this too he had well in check at all 
times. - If this was vanity, then he might by some be 
called'a little vain, if not not. To trample on the smallest 
mortal or be tyrannous even towards the basest of caitiffs 
was never at any moment Irving's turn. No man that I 
have known had a sunnier type of character, or so little of 
hatred towards any man or thing. On the whole, less of 
rage in him than I ever saw combined with such a fund 
of courage and .conviction. Noble Irving ! he was the 
faithful elder brother of my life in those years ; generous, 
wise, beneficent, all his dealings and discoursings with me 
were. Well may I recollect as blessed things in my exis- 
tence those Annan and other visits, and feel that beyond 
all other men he was helpful to me when I most needed 
help. 

Irving's position at Glasgow, I could dimly perceive, 
was not without its embarrassments, its discouragements ; 
and evidently enough it was nothing like the ultimatum 
he was aiming at, in the road to which I suppose he saw 



150 EDWARD IRVING. 

the obstructions rather multiplying than decreasing or di- 
minishing. Theological Scotland above all things is du- 
bious and jealous of originality, and Irving's tendency to 
take a road of his own was becoming daily more indis- 
putable. He must have been severely tried in the sieve 
had he continued in Scotland. Whether that might not 
have brought him out clearer, more pure and victorious 
in the end, must remain for ever a question. Much suf- 
fering and contradiction it would have cost him, mean 
enough for most part, and possibly with loss of patience, 
with mutiny etc., for ultimate result, but one may now 
regret that the experiment was never to be made. 

Of course the invitation to London was infinitely wel- 
come to him, summing up, as it were, all of good that had 
been in Glasgow (for it was the rumours and reports from 
Glasgow people that had awakened Hatton Garden to his 
worth), and promising to shoot him aloft over all that had 
been obstructive there into wider new elements. The ne- 
gotiations and correspondings had all passed at a distance 
from me, but I recollect well our final practical parting on 
that occasion. A dim night, November or December, 
between nine and ten, in the coffee-room of the Black 
Bull Hotel. He was to start by early coach to-morrow. 
Glad I was bound to be, and in a sense was, but very sad 
I could not help being. He himself looked hopeful, but 
was agitated with anxieties too, doubtless with regrets as 
well ; more clouded with agitation than I had ever seen 
the fine habitual solar light of him before. I was the last 
friend he had to take farewell of He showed me old Sir 
Harry Moncrieff's testimonial ; a Reverend Presbyterian 



EDWARD IRVING. 151 

Scotch Baronet of venerable quality (the last of his kind), 
whom I knew well by sight, and by his universal character 
for integrity, honest orthodoxy, shrewdness, and veracity. 
Sir Harry testified with brevity, in stiff, firm, ancient 
hand, several important things on Irving's behalf; and 
ended by saying, " All this is my true opinion, and meant 
to be understood as it is written." At which we had our 
bit of approving laugh, and thanks to Sir Harry. Irving 
did not laugh that night ; laughter was not the mood of 
either of us.. I gave him as road companion a bundle of 
the best cigars (gift of Graham to me) I almost ever had. 
He had no practice of smoking, but a little by a time, and 
agreed that on the coach roof, where he was to ride night 
and day, a cigar now and then might be tried with ad- 
vantage. Months afterwards I learnt he had begun by 
losing every cigar of them ; left the whole bundle lying 
on the seat in the stall of the coffee-room ; this cigar 
gift being probably our last transaction there. We said 
farewell ; and I had in some sense, according to my 
worst anticipations, lost my friend's society (not my friend 
himself ever), from that time. 

For a long while I saw nothing of Irving after this. 
Heard in the way of public rumours or more specific re- 
port, chiefly from Graham and Hope of Glasgow, how 
grandly acceptable he had been at Hatton Garden, and 
what negotiating, deliberating, and contriving had ensued 
in respect of the impediments there {" preacher ignorant 
of Gaelic ; our fundamental law requires him to preach 
half the Sunday in that language," etc.), and how at 
length all these were ^ot over or tumbled aside, and the 



152 EDWARD IRVING. 

matter settled Into adjustment. " Irving, our preacher, 
talis qualis^" to the huge contentment of his congrega- 
tion and all onlookers, of which latter were already in 
London a select class ; the chief religious people getting 
to be aware that an altogether uncommon man had ar- 
rived here to speak to them. 

On all these points, and generally on all his experiences 
in London, glad enough should I have been to hear from 
him abundantly, but he wrote nothing on such points, 
nor in fact had I expected anything ; and the truth was, 
which did a little disappoint me at the time, our regular 
correspondence had here suddenly come to finis ! I was 
not angry, how could I be ? I made no solicitation or re- 
monstrance, nor was any poor pride kindled (I think), 
except strictly, and this in silence, so far as was proper 
for self-defence ; but I was always sorry more or less, and 
regretted it as a great loss I had by ill-luck undergone. 
Taken from me by ill-luck ! but then had it not been given 
me by good ditto ? Peace, and be silent ! In the first 
month Irving, I doubt not, had intended much correspon- 
dence with me, were the hurlyburly done ; but no sooner 
was it so in some measure, than his flaming popularity 
had begun, spreading, mounting without limit, and in- 
stead of business hurlyburly, there was whirlwind of confla- 
gration. 

Noble, good soul ! In his last weeks of life, looking 
back from that grim shore upon the safe sunny isles and 
smiling possibilities now for ever far behind, he said to 
Henry Drummond, *' I should have kept Thomas Carlyle 
closer to me ; his counsel, blame, or praise, was always 



EDWARD IRVING. 153 

faithful, and few have such eyes." These words, the first 
part of them ipsissima verba, I know to have been verily 
his. Must not the most blazing indignation (had the least 
vestige of such been ever in me for one moment) have 
died almost into tears at the sound of them ? Perfect ab- 
solution there had long been without enquiring after peni- 
tence. My ever-generous, loving, and noble Irving ! . . . 
If in a gloomy moment I had fancied that my friend 
was lost to me because no letters came from him, I had 
shining proof to the contrary very soon. It was in these 
first months of Hatton Garden and its imbroglio of affairs, 
that he did a most signal benefit to me ; got me ap- 
pointed tutor and intellectual guide and guardian to the 
young Charles Buller, and his boy brother, now Sir 
Arthur, and an elderly ex-Indian of mark. The case had 
its comic points too, seriously important as it was to me 
for one. Its pleasant real history is briefly this. Irving's 
preaching had attracted Mrs. Strachey, wife of a well- 
known Indian official of Somersetshire kindred, then an 
"examiner" in the India House, and a man of real 
worth, far diverse as his worth and ways were from those 
of his beautiful, enthusiastic, and still youngish wife. A 
bright creature she, given wholly (though there lay silent 
in her a great deal of fine childlike mirth and of innocent 
grace and gift) to things sacred and serious, emphatically 
what the Germans call a schone Seele. She had brought 
Irving into her circle, found him good and glorious there, 
almost more than in the pulpit itself; had been speaking 
of him to her elder sister, Mrs. Buller (a Calcutta fine lady 
and princess of the kind worshipped there, a once very 



154 EDWARD IRVING. 

beautiful, still very witty, graceful, airy, and ingenuously 
intelligent woman of the gossamer kind), and had natural- 
ly winded up with " Come and dine with us ; come and 
see this uncommon man." Mrs. BuUer came, saw (I dare 
say with much suppressed quizzing and w^onder) the 
uncommon man ; took to him. She also in her way 
recognised, as did her husband too, the robust practical 
common sense that was in him ; and after a few meetings 
began speaking of a domestic intricacy there was with a 
clever but too mercurial and unmanageable eldest son of 
hers, whom they knew not what to do with. 

Irving took sight and survey of this dangerous eldest 
lad, Charles BuUer junior, namely — age then about fifteen, 
honourably done with Harrow some weeks or months ago, 
still too young for college on his own footing, and very 
difficult to dispose of. Irving perceived that though per- 
fectly accomplished in what Harrow could give him, this 
hungry and highly ingenious youth had fed hitherto on 
Latin and Greek husks, totally unsatisfying to his huge 
appetite ; that being a young fellow of the keenest sense 
for everything, from the sublime to the ridiculous, and 
full of airy ingenuity and fun, he was in the habit in quiet 
evenings at home of starting theses with his mother in 
favour of Pierce Egan and " Boxiana," as if the annals of 
English boxing were more nutritive to an existing man 
than those of the Peloponnesian war etc. Against all 
which etc., as his mother vehemently argued, Charles 
would stand on the defensive, with such swiftness and in- 
genuity of fence, that frequently the matter kindled be- 
tween them ; and both being of hot though most placable 



I 



EDWARD IRVING. 155 

temper, one or both grew loud ; and the old gentleman, 
Charles Buller senior, who was very deaf, striking blindly 
in at this point would embroil the whole matter into a 
very bad condition ! Irving's recipe after some consider- 
ation was, " Send this gifted, unguided youth to Edin- 
burgh College. I know a young man there who could 
lead him into richer spiritual pastures and take effective 
charge of him." Buller thereupon was sent, and his 
brother Arthur with him ; boarded with a good old Dr. 
Fleming (in George Square) then a clergyman of mark : 
and I (on a salary of 200/. a year) duly took charge. 
This was a most important thing to me in the economies 
and practical departments of my life, and I owe it wholly 
to Irving. On this point I always should remember he 
did '' write " copiously enough to Dr. Fleming and other 
parties, and stood up in a gallant and grandiloquent way 
for every claim and right of his "young literary friend," 
who had nothing to do but wait silent while everything 
was being adjusted completely to his wish or beyond it. 

From the first I found my Charles a most manageable, 
intelligent, cheery, and altogether welcome and intelligent 
phenomenon ; quite a bit of sunshine in my dreary Edin- 
burgh element. I was in waiting for his brother and him 
when they landed at Fleming's. We set instantly out on 
a walk, round by the foot of Salisbury Crags, up from 
Holyrood, by the Castle and Law Courts, home again to 
George Square ; and really I recollect few more pleasant 
walks in my life ! So all-intelligent, seizing everything 
you said to him with such a recognition ; so loyal-hearted, 
chivalrous, guileless, so delighted (evidently) with me, as 



156 EDWARD IRVING. 

I was with him. Arthur, two years younger, kept mainly 
silent, being slightly deaf too ; but I could perceive that 
he also was a fine httle fellow, honest, inteUigent, and 
kind, and that apparently I had been much in luck in this 
didactic adventure, which proved abundantly the fact. 
The two youths took to me with unhesitating liking, and 
I to them ; and we never had anything of quarrel or even 
of weariness and dreariness between us ; such " teaching " 
as I never did in any sphere before or since ! Charles, by 
his qualities, his ingenuous curiosities, his brilliancy of 
faculty and character, was actually an entertainment to 
me rather than a labour. If we walked together, which I 
remember sometimes happening, he was the best com- 
pany I could find in Edinburgh. I had entered him of 
Dunbar's, in third Greek class at college. In Greek and 
Latin, in the former in every respect, he was far my su- 
perior ; and I had to prepare my lessons by way of keep- 
ing him to his work at Dunbar's. Keeping him to work 
was my one difficulty, if there was one, and my essential 
function. I tried to guide him into reading, into soUd en- 
quiry and reflection. He got some mathematics from 
me, and might have had more. He got in brief what ex- 
pansion into such wider fields of intellect and more man- 
ful modes of thinking and working, as my poor possibili- 
ties could yield him ; and was always generously grateful 
to me afterwards. Friends of mine in a fine frank way, 
beyond what I could be thought to merit, he, Arthur, 
and all the family continued till death parted us. 

This of the BuUers was the product for me of Irving** 
first months in London, begun and got under way in th( 



EDWARD IRVING. 1 57 

Spring and summer of 1822, which followed our winter 
parting in the Black Bull Inn. I was already getting my 
head a little up ; translating " Legendre's Geometry" for 
Brewster ; my outlook somewhat cheerfuller. I still re- 
member a happy forenoon (Sunday, I fear) in which I did 
a FiftJi Book (or complete ** doctrine of proportion ") for 
that work, complete really and lucid, and yet one of the 
briefest ever known. It was begun and done that fore- 
noon, and I have (except correcting the press next week) 
never seen it since ; but still feel as if it were right enough 
and felicitous in its kind ! I got only 50/. for my entire 
trouble in that "■ Legendre," and had already ceased to 
be in the least proud of matJicmatical prowess ; but it 
was an honest job of work honestly done, though perhaps 
for bread and water wages, such an improvement upon 
wages producing (in Jean Paul's phrase) only water with- 
out the bread ! Towards autumn the Buller family fol- 
lowed to Edinburgh, Mr. and Mrs. B. with a third very 
small son, Reginald, who was a curious, gesticulating, 
pen-drawing, etc. little creature, not to be under my 
charge, but who generally dined \^A\h.vci^ at luncheon 
time, and who afterwards turned out a lazy, hebetated 
fellow, and is now parson of Troston, a fat living in Suf- 
folk. These English or Anglo-Indian gentlefolks were 
all a new species to me, sufficiently exotic in aspect ; but 
we recognised each other's quality more and more, and 
did very well together. They had a house in India 
Street, saw a great deal of company (of the ex-Indian ac- 
cidental English gentleman, and native or touring lion 
genus for which Mrs. B. had a lively appetite). I still 



158 EDWARD IRVING. 

lodged in my old half-rural rooms, 3 Moray Place, Pilrig 
Street ; attended my two pupils during the day hours 
(lunching with ''Regie" by way of dinner), and rather 
seldom, yet to my own taste amply often enough, was of 
the " state dinners ; " but walked home to my books and 
to my brother John, who was now lodging with me and 
attending college. Except for dyspepsia I could have 
been extremely content, but that did dismally forbid me 
now and afterwards ! Irving and other friends always 
treated the " ill-health " item as a light matter which 
would soon vanish from the account ; but I had a presen- 
timent that it would stay there, and be the Old Man of 
the Sea to me through life, as it has too tragically done, 
and will do to the end. Woe on it, and not for my own 
poor sake alone ; and yet perhaps a benefit has been in 
it, priceless though hideously painful ! 

Of Irving in these two years I recollect almost noth- 
ing personal, though all round I heard a great deal of 
him ; and he must have been in my company at least 
once prior to the advent of the elder BuUers, and been 
giving me counsel and light on the matter ; for I recollect 
his telling me of Mrs. BuUer (having no doubt portrayed 
Mr. Buller to me in acceptable and clearly intelligible 
lineaments) that she — she too, was a worthy, honourable, 
and quick-sighted lady, but not without fine-ladyisms, 
crotchets, caprices, — "somewhat like Mrs. Welsh,' you 
can fancy, but good too, like her." Ah me ! this I per- 
fectly remember, this and nothing more, of those Irving 

' Mrs. Welsh of Haddington, mother of Jane Welsh, afterwards Mrs. 
Carlyle. 



EDWARD IRVING. 1 59 

intercourses ; and It is a memento to me of a most im- 
portant province in my poor world at that time ! I was 
in constant correspondence (weekly or oftener sending 
books etc. etc.) with Haddington, and heard often of 
Irving, and of things far more interesting to me from 
that quarter. Gone silent, closed for ever — so sad, so 
strange it all is now ! Irving, I think, had paid a visit 
there, and had certainly sent letters ; by the above token 
I too must have seen him at least once. All this was in 
his first London year, or half-year, some months before 
his "popularity" had yet taken /r^, and made him for 
a time the property of all the world rather than of his 
friends. 

The news of this latter event, which came in vague, 
vast, fitful, and dtcxd^dly fiiligi7ious forms, was not quite 
welcome to any of us, perhaps in secret not Avelcome at 
all. People have their envies, their pitiful self-compari- 
sons, and feel obliged sometimes to profess from the teeth 
outwards more "joy" than they really have; not an 
agreeable duty or quasi-duty laid on one. For myself 
I can say that there was first something of real joy ; 
(*' success to the worthy of success,") second, some- 
thing, probably not yet much, of honest question for his 
sake, ** Can he guide it in that huge element, as e.g. 
Chalmers has done in this smaller one?" and third, a 
noticeable quantity of Quid tiii interest? What business 
hast thou with it, poor, suffering, handcuffed wretch ? 
To me these great doings in Hatton Garden came only 
on wings of rumour, the exact nature of them uncertain. 
To me for many months back Irving had fallen totally 



l60 EDWARD IRVING. 

silent, and this seemed a seal to its being a permanent 
silence. I had been growing steadily worse in health too, 
and was in habitual wretchedness, ready to say, ** Well, 
w^hoever is happy and gaining victory, thou art and 
art like to be very miserable, and to gain none at all." 
These were, so far as I can now read, honestly my feel- 
ings on the matter. My love to Irving, now that I look 
at it across those temporary vapours, had not abated, 
never did abate : but he seemed for the present flown 
(or mounted if that was it) far away from me, and I could 
only say to myself, " Well, well then, so it must be." 

One heard too, often enough, that in Irving there was 
visible a certain joyancy and frankness of triumph ; that 
he took things on the high key and nothing doubting ; 
and foolish stories circulated about his lofty sayings, sub- 
limities of manner, and the like : something of which I 
could believe (and yet kindly interpret too) ; all which 
might have been, though it scarcely was, some consola- 
tion for our present silence towards one another. For 
what could I have said in the circumstances that would 
have been on both sides agreeable and profitable ? 

It was not till late in autumn 1823, nearly two years 
after our parting in the Black Bull Inn, that I fairly, and 
to a still memorable measure, saw Irving again. He was 
on his marriage jaunt, Miss Martin of Kirkcaldy now be- 
come his life-partner ; off on a tour to the Highlands ; 
and the generous soul had determined to pass near Kin- 
nalrd (right bank of Tay, a mile below the junction of 
Tummel and Tay) where I then was with the Bullers, and 
pick me up to accompany as far as I would. I forget 



EDWARD IRVING. l6l 

where or how our meeting was (at Dunkeld probably). 
I seem to have lodged with them two nights in successive 
inns, and certainly parted from them at Taymouth, Sun- 
day afternoon, where my horse by some means must have 
been waiting for me. I remember baiting him ' at Aber- 
feldy, and to have sate in a kindly and polite yet very 
huggermugger cottage, among good peasant kirk-people, 
refreshing themselves, returning home from sermon ; sate 
for perhaps some two hours, till poor Dolph got rested 
and refected like his fellow-creatures there. I even re- 
member something like a fraction of scrag of mutton and 
potatoes eaten by myself — in strange contrast, had I 
thought of that, to Irving's nearly simultaneous dinner 
which would be with my Lord at Taymouth Castle. After 
Aberfeldy cottage the curtain falls. 

Irving, on this his wedding jaunt, seemed superlatively 
happy, as was natural to the occasion, or more than nat- 
ural, as if at the top of Fortune's wheel, and in a sense 
(a generous sense it must be owned, and not a tyrannous 
in any measure) striking the stars with his sublime head. 
Mrs. I. was demure and quiet, though doubtless not less 
happy at heart, really comely in her behaviour. In the 
least beautiful she never could be ; but Irving had loyally 
taken her as the consummate flower of all his victory in 
the world— poor good tragic woman— better probably 
than the fortune she had after all. 

My friend was kind to me as possible, and bore with 

1 Excellent cob or pony Dolph, i.e. Bavdolph, bought for me at Lilliesleaf 
fair by my clear brother Alick, and which I had ridden into the Highlands for 
health. 

II 



1 62 EDWARD IRVING. 

my gloomy humours (for I was ill and miserable to a de- 
gree), nay perhaps as foil to the radiancy of his own sun- 
shine he almost enjoyed them. I remember jovial bursts 
of laughter from him at my surly sarcastic and dyspeptic 
utterances. " Doesn't this subdue you, Carlyle ? " said he 
somewhat solemnly : we were all three standing at the 
Falls of Aberfeldy (amid the " Birks " of ditto, and mem- 
ories of song) silent in the October dusk, perhaps with 
moon rising — our ten miles to Taymouth still ahead — 
" Doesn't this subdue you?" "Subdue me? I should 
hope not. I have quite other things to front with defiance 
in this world than a gush of bog-water tumbling over crags 
as here ! " which produced a joyous and really kind laugh 
from him as sole answer. He had much to tell me of 
London, of its fine literary possibilities for a man, of its 
literary stars, whom he had seen or knew of, Coleridge in 
particular, who was in the former category, a marvellous 
sage and man ; Hazlitt, who was in the latter, a fine talent 
too, but tendmg towards scamphood ; was at the Font hill 
Abbey sale the other week, '' hired to attend as a white 
boniiet there," said he with a laugh. White bonnet in- 
tensely vernacular, is the Annandale name for a false bid- 
der merely appointed to raise prices, works so for his five 
shillings at some poor little Annandale roup ' of standing 
crop or hypothecate cottage furniture, and the contrast 
and yet kinship between these little things and the Font- 
hill great one was ludicrous enough. He would not hear 
of ill-health being any hindrance to me ; he had himself 
no experience in that sad province. All seemed possible 

^ Ruf, or vocal sale. 



i 



EDWARD IRVING. 163 

to him, all was joyful and running upon wheels. He had 
suffered much angry criticism in his late triumphs (on his 
'• Orations" quite lately), but seemed to accept it all with 
jocund mockery, as something harmless and beneath him. 
Wilson in " Blackwood" had been very scornful and 
done his bitterly enough disobliging best. Nevertheless 
Irving now advising with me about some detail of our 
motions, or of my own, and finding I still demurred to it, 
said with true radiancy of look, '' Come now, you know I 
am the judicious Hooker y' which w^as considered one of 
Wilson's cruellest hits in that Blackwood article. To 
myself I remember his answering, in return evidently for 
some criticism of my own on the orations which was not 
so laudatory as required, but of which I recollect nothing 
farther, "Well, Carlyle, I am glad to hear you say all 
that ; it gives me the opinion of another mind on the 
thing ; " which at least beyond any doubt it did. He was 
in high sunny humour, good Irving. There was no trace 
of anger left in him, he was jovial, riant, jocose rather than 
serious, throughout, which was a new phasis to me. And 
furthermore in the serious vein itself there was oftenest 
something oi falsetto noticeable (as in that of the water- 
fall ** subduing " one), generally speaking a new height of 
self consciousness not yet sure of the manner and carriage 
that was suitablest for it. He aff*ected to feel his popu- 
larity too great and burdensome ; spoke much about a 
Mrs. Basil Montague ; elderly, sage, lofty, whom we got 
to know afterwards, and to call by his name for her, " the 
noble lady ; " who had saved him greatly from the dash- 
insf floods of that tumultuous and unstable element, hid- 



1 64 EDWARD IRVING. 

den him away from it once and again ; done kind minis- 
trations, spread sofas for him, and taught him *' to rest." 
The last thing I recollect of him was on our coming out 
from Taymouth Kirk (kirk, congregation, minister, utterly 
erased from me), how in coming down the broadish little 
street, he pulled off his big broad hat, and walked, looking' 
mostly to the sky, with his fleece of copious coal-black 
hair flowing in the wind, and in some spittings of rain that 
were beginning ; how thereupon in a minute or two a 
livery servant ran up, ^' Please sir, aren't you the Rev, 
Edward Irving?" **Yes." *'Then my Lord Bread- 
albane begs you to stop for him one moment." Where- 
upon Q^\\, flunkey . Irving turning to us with what look 
of sorrow he could, and '' Again found out ! " upon which 
the old Lord came up,^ and civilly invited him to dinner. 
Him and party, I suppose ; but to me there was no temp- 
tation, or on those terms less than none. So I had Bar- 
dolph saddled and rode for Aberfeldy as above said ; home, 
sunk in manifold murky reflections now lost to me ; and 
of which only the fewest and friendliest were comfortably 
fit for uttering to the Bullers next day. I saw no more 
of Irving for this time. But he had been at Haddington 
too, was perhaps again corresponding a little there, and I 
heard occasionally of him in the beautiful bright and 
kindly quizzing style that was natural there. 

I was myself writing " Schiller" in those months; a 
task Irving had encouraged me in and prepared the way 
for, in the " London Magazine." Three successive parts 
there' were, I know not how far advanced, at this period ; 

^ Father of tBe last, or later, Free Kirk one, whom I have sometimes seen. 



EDWARD IRVING. 1 65 

knew only that I was nightly working at the thing in a 
serious sad and totally solitary way. My two rooms 
were in the old '' Mansion" of Kinnaird, some three or 
four hundred yards from the new, and on a lower level, 
over-shadowed with wood. Thither I always retired 
directly after tea, and for most part had the edifice all to 
myself; good candles, good wood fire, place dry enough, 
tolerably clean, and such silence and total absence of 
company, good or bad, as I never experienced before or 
since. I remember still the grand sough of those woods ; 
or, perhaps, in the stillest times, the distant .ripple of Tay. 
Nothing else to converse with but this and my own 
thoughts, which never for a moment pretended to be joy- 
ful, and were sometimes pathetically sad. I was in the 
miserablest dyspeptic health, uncertain whether I ought 
not to quit on that account, and at times almost resolving 
to do it ; driven far away from all my loved ones. My 
poor "■ Schiller," nothing considerable of a work even to 
my own judgment, had to be steadily persisted in as the 
only protection and resource in this inarticulate huge 
" wilderness," actual and symbolical. My editor, I think, 
was complimentary ; but I knew better. The " Times " 
newspaper once brought me, without commentary at all, 
an "eloquent" passage reprinted (about the tragedy of 
noble literary life), which I remember to have read with 
more pleasure in this utter isolation, and as the '' first" 
public nod of approval I had ever had, than any criticism 
or laudation that has ever come to me since. For about 
two hours it had hghted in the desolation of my inner man 
a strange little glow of illumination ; but here too, on re- 



1 66- EDWARD IRVING. 

flection, I *' knew better," and the winter afternoon was 
not over when I saw clearly how very small this conquest 
was, and things were in their static qzio again. 

'^Schiller" done, I began " Wilhelm Meister," a task 
I liked perhaps rather better, too scanty as my knowledge 
of the element, and even of the language, still was. Two 
years before I had at length, after some repulsions, got 
into the heart of *' Wilhelm Meister," and eagerly read it 
through ; my sally out, after finishing, along the vacant 
streets of Edinburgh, a windless, Scotch-misty Saturday 
night, is still vivid to me. " Grand, surely, harmoniously 
built together, far seeing, wise and true. When, for many 
years, or almost in my whole life before, have I read such 
a book ? " Which I was now, really in part as a kind of 
duty, conscientiously translating for my countrymen, if 
they would read it — as a select few of them have ever 
since kept doing. 

I finished it the next spring, not at Kinnaird but at 
Mainhill. A month or two there with my best of nurses 
and of hostesses — my mother ; blessed voiceless or low- 
voiced time, still sweet to me ; with London now silently 
ahead, and the BuUers there, or to be there. Of Kinnaird 
life they had now had enough, and of my miserable health 
far more than enough some time before ! But that is not 
my subject here. I had ridden to Edinburgh, there to 
consult a doctor, having at last reduced my complexities 
to a single question. Is this disease curable by medicine, 
or is it chronic, incurable except by regimen, if even so ? 
This question I earnestly put; got response, ** It is all 
tobacco, sir; give up tobacco." Gave it instantly and 



EDWARD IRVING. 1 6/ 

strictly up. Found, after long- months, that I might as 
well have ridden sixty miles in the opposite direction, and 
poured my sorrows into the long hairy ear of the first 
jackass I came upon, as into this select medical man's, 
whose name I will not mention. 

After these still months at Mainhill, my printing at 
Edinburgh was all finished, and I went thither with my 
preface in my pocket ; finished that and the rest of the 
" Meister " business (i8o/. of payment the choicest part 
of it!) rapidly ofif; made a visit to Haddington ; what a 
retrospect to me, now encircled by the silences and the 
eternities ; most beautiful, most sad ! I remember the 
** gimp bonnet " she wore, and her anxious silent 
thoughts, and my own ; mutually legible, both of them, 
in part ; my own little darling now at rest, and far away ! 
— which was the last thing in Scotland. Of the Leith 
smack, every figure and event in which is curiously pres- 
ent, though so unimportant, I will say nothing ; only that 
we entered London River on a beautiful June morning ; 
scene very impressive to me, and still very vivid in me ; 
and that, soon after midday, I landed safe in Irving's, as 
appointed. 

Irving lived in Myddelton Terrace, Jiodie Myddelton 
Square, Islington, No. 4. It was a new place ; houses 
bright and smart, but inwardly bad, as usual. Only one 
side of the now square was built — the western side — which 
has its back towards Battle Bridge region. Irving's house 
was fourth from the northern end of that, which, of course, 
had its left hand on the New Road. The place was airy, 
not uncheerful. Our chief prospect from the front was a 



1 68 EDWARD IRVING. 

good space of green ground, and in it, on the hither edge 
of it, the big open reservoir of Myddelton's *' New River," 
now above two centuries old for that matter, but recently 
made new again, and all cased in tight masonry ; on the 
spacious expanse of smooth flags surrounding which it 
was pleasant on fine mornings to take an early promen- 
ade, with the free sky overhead and the New Road with 
its lively traffic and vehiculation seven or eight good yards 
below our level. I remember several pretty strolls here, 
ourselves two, while breakfast was getting ready close by; 
and the esplanade, a high little island, lifted free out of 
the noises and jostlings, was all our own. 

Irving had received me with the old true friendliness ; 
wife and household eager to imitate him therein. I seem 
to have stayed a good two or three weeks with them at 
that time. Buller arrangements not yet ready ; nay, 
sometimes threatening to become uncertain altogether ! 
and off and on during the next ten months I saw a great 
deal of my old friend and his new affairs and posture. 
That first afternoon, with its curious phenomena, is still 
very lively in me. Basil Montague's eldest son,^ Mr. 
Montague junior, accidental guest at our neat little early 
dinner, my first specimen of the London dandy — broken 
dandy ; very mild of manner, who went all to shivers, 
and died miserable soon after. This was novelty first. 
Then, during or before his stay with us, dash of a brave 
carriage driving up, and entry of a strangely-complexioned 
young lady, with soft brown eyes and floods of bronze red 

' Noble lady's step-son. She was Basil's third wife, and had four kinds 
of children at home — a most sad miscellany, as I afterwards found. 



k 



EDWARD IRVING. 169 

hair, really a pretty-looking, smiling, and amiable, though 
most foreign bit of magnificence and kindly splendour, 
whom they welcomed by the name of " dear Kitty." 
Kitty Kirkpatrick, Charles BuUer's co'usin or half-cousin, 
Mrs. Strachey's full cousin, w^ith whom she lived ; her 
birth, as I afterwards found, an Indian romance, mother a 
sublime Begum, father a ditto English official, mutually 
adoring, ;vvedding, living withdrawn in their own private 
paradise, romance famous in the East. A very singular 
*• dear Kitty," who seemed bashful withal, and soon went 
away, twitching off in the lobby, as I could notice not 
without wonder, the loose label which was sticking to my 
trunk or bag, still there as she tripped past, and carrying 
it ofif in her pretty hand. With what imaginable object 
then, in heaven's name ? To show it to Mrs. Strachey I 
afterwards guessed, to whom privately poor I had been 
prophesied of in the most grandiloquent terms. This 
might be called novelty second, if not first, and far great- 
est. Then after dinner in the drawing-room, which was 
prettily furnished, the romance of said furnishing, which 
had all been done as if by beneficent fairies in some tem- 
porary absence of the owners. " We had decided on not 
furnishing it," Irving told me, " not till we had more 
money ready ; and on our return this was how we found 
it. The people here are of a nobleness you have never 
before seen." " And don't you yet guess at all who can 
have done it ? " *' H'm, perhaps we guess vaguely, but 
it is their secret, and we should not break it against their 
will." It turned out to have been Mrs. Strachey and dear 
Kitty, both of whom were rich and openhanded, that had 



h 



I70 EDWARD IRVING. 

done this fine stroke of art magic, one of the many munifi- 
cences achieved by them in this new province. Perhaps 
the ''noble lady" had at first been suspected, but how 
innocently she ! Not flush in that way at all, though 
notably so in others ! The talk about these and other 
noble souls and new phenomena, strange to me and half 
incredible in such interpretation, left me wondering and 
confusedly guessing over the much that I had heard and 
seen this day. 

Irving's London element and mode of existence had 
its questionable aspects from the first ; and one could 
easily perceive, here as elsewhere, that the ideal of fancy 
and the actual of fact were two very different things. It 
was as the former that my friend, according to old habit, 
strove to represent it to himself, and to make it be; and 
it was as the latter that it obstinately continued being ! 
There were beautiful items in his present scene of life ; 
but a great majority which, under specious figure, were 
intrinsically poor, vulgar, and importunate, and in- 
troduced largely into one's existence the character of 
huggermiigger y not of greatness or success in any real 
sense. 

He was inwardly, I could observe, nothing like so 
happy as in old days ; inwardly confused, anxious, dis- 
satisfied ; though as it were denying it to himself, and 
striving. If not to talk big, which he hardly ever did, to 
think big upon all this. We had many strolls together, 
no doubt much dialogue, but it has nearly all gone from 
me ; probably not so worthy of remembrance as our old 
communings were. Crowds of visitors came about him. 



EDWARD IRVING. I/I 

and ten times or a hundred times as many would have 
come if allowed ; well-dressed, decorous people, but for 
most part tiresome, ignorant, weak, or even silly and ab- 
surd. He persuaded himself that at least he ** loved their 
love ; " and of this latter, in the kind they had to offer 
him, there did seem to be no lack. He and I were walk- 
ing, one bright summer evening, somewhere in the out- 
skirts of IsUngton, in what was or had once been fields^ 
and was again coarsely green in general, but with symp- 
toms of past devastation by bricklayers, who have now 
doubtless covered it all with their dirty human " dog- 
hutches of the period;" when, in some smoothish hol- 
lower spot, there suddenly disclosed itself a considerable 
company of altogether fine-looking young girls, who had 
set themselves to dance ; all in airy bonnets, silks, and 
flounces, merrily alert, nimble as young fawns, tripping it 
to their own rhythm on the light fantastic toe, with the 
bright beams of the setting sun gilding them, and the hum 
and smoke of huge London shoved aside as foil or back- 
ground. Nothing could be prettier. At sight of us they 
suddenly stopped, all looking round ; and one of the pret- 
tiest, a dainty little thing, stept radiantly out to Irving. 
*' Oh ! oh ! Mr. Irving ! " and blushing and smiling offered 
her pretty lips to be kissed, which Irving gallantly stooped 
down to accept as well worth while. Whereupon, after 
some benediction or pastoral words, we went on our way. 
Probably I raUied him on such opulence of luck provided 
for a man, to which he could answer properly as a spiritual 
shepherd, not a secular. 

There were several Scotch merchant people among 



172 EDWARD IRVING. 

those that came about him, substantial city men of shrewd 
insight and good honest sense, several of whom seemed 
truly attached and reverent. One, William Hamilton, a 
very shrewd and pious Nithsdale man, who wedded a 
sister of Mrs. Irving' s by and by, and whom I knew till 
his death, was probably the chief of these, as an old good 
Mr. Dinwiddie, very zealous, very simple, and far from 
shrewd, might perhaps be reckoned at or near the other end 
of the series. Sir Peter Laurie, afterwards of aldermanic 
and even mayoral celebrity, came also pretty often, but 
seemed privately to look quite from the aldermanic point 
of view on Irving and the new " Caledonian Chapel " they 
were struggHng to get built — old Mr. Dinwiddie especial- 
ly struggling ; and indeed once to me at Paris, a while 
after this, he likened Irving and Dinwiddie to Harlequin 
and Blast, whom he had seen in some farce then current ; 
Harlequin conjuring up the most glorious possibilities, 
like this of their " Caledonian Chapel," and Blast loyally 
following him with swift destruction on attempting to 
help. Sir Peter rather took to me, but not I much to 
him. A long-sighted satirical ex-saddler I found him to 
be, and nothing better ; nay, something of an ex-Scotch- 
man too, which I could still less forgive. I went with 
the Irvings once to his house (Crescent, head of Portland 
Place) to a Christmas dinner this same year. Very sump- 
tuous, very cockneyish, strange and unadmirable to me ; 
and don't remember to have met him again. On our com- 
ing to liv^e in London he had rather grown in civic fame and 
importance, and possibly, for I am not quite sure, on the 
feeble chance of being of some help, I sent him some in- 



EDWARD IRVING. 173 

dication or other; ' but if so he took no notice ; gave no 
sign. Some years afterwards I met him in my rides in 
the Park, evidently recognisant, and willing or wistful to 
speak, but it never came to effect, there being now no 
charm in it. Then again, years afterwards, when " Latter- 
day Pamphlets " were coming out, he wrote me on that 
of Model Prisons a knowing, approving, kindly and civil 
letter, to which I willingly responded by a kindly and 
civil. Not very long after that I think he died, riding 
diligently almost to the end. Poor Sir Peter ! he was 
nothing of a bad man, very far other indeed ; but had 
lived in a loud roaring, big, pretentious, and intrinsically 
barren sphere, unconscious wholly that he might have 
risen to the top in a considerably nobler and fruitfuller 
one. What a tragic, treacherous stepdame is vulgar 
Fortune to her children ! Sir Peter's wealth has gone 
now in good part to somebody concerned in discovering, 
not for the first time, the source of the Nile (blessings on 
it !) — a Captain Grant, I think, companion to Speke, hav- 
ing married Sir Peter's Scotch niece and lady heiress, a 
good clever girl, once of ** Haddington," and extremely 
poor, who made her way to my loved one on the ground 
of common country in late years, and used to be rather 
liked here in the few visits she made. 

Grant and she, who are now gone to India, called after 
marriage but found nobody; nor now ever will. 

By far the most distinguished two, and to me the alone 
important, of Irving's London circle, were Mrs. Strachey 

' A project belike — and my card with it — one of several air-castles I was 
anxiously building at that time before taking to French Revolution. 



174 EDWARD IRVING. 

(Mrs. Buller's younger sister), and the '' noble lady " Mrs. 
Basil Montague, with both of whom and their households 
I became acquainted by his means. One of my first visits 
was along with him to Goodenough House, Shooter's Hill, 
where the Stracheys oftenest were in summer. I remem- 
ber once entering the little winding avenue, and seeing, in 
a kind of open conservatory or verandah on our approach- 
ing the house, the effulgent vision of " dear Kitty" bur- 
ied among the roses and almost buried under them ; who 
on sight of us glided hastily in. The before and after and 
all other incidents of that first visit are quite lost to me, 
but I made a good many visits there and in town, and 
grew familiar with my ground. 

Of Mrs. Strachey I have spoken already. To this day, 
long years after her death, I regard her as a singular pearl 
of a woman, pure as dcAV, yet full of love, incapable of 
unveracity to herself or others. Examiner Strachey had 
long been an official (judge etc. ) in Bengal, where brothers 
of his were, and sons still are. Eldest son is now master, 
by inheritance, of the family estate in Somersetshire. One 
of the brothers had translated a curious old Hindoo trea- 
tise on algebra, which had made his name familiar to me. 
Edward (that I think was the examiner's name) might be 
a few years turned of fifty at this time ; his wife twenty 
years younger, with a number of pretty children, the eldest 
hardly fourteen, and only one of them a girl. They lived 
in Fitzroy Square, a fine-enough house, and had a very 
pleasant country establishment at Shooter's Hill ; where, 
in summer time, they were all commonly to be found. I 
have seldom seen apleasanter place ; a panorama of green, 



EDWARD IRVING. 175 

flowery, clear, and decorated coun.try all round ; an um- 
brageous little park, with roses, gardens ; a modestly- 
excellent house ; from the drawing-room window a con- 
tinual view of ships, multiform and multitudinous, sailing 
up or down the river (about a mile off) ; smoky London 
as background ; the clear sky overhead ; and within doors 
honesty, good sense, and smiling seriousness the rule, and 
not the exception. Edward Strachey was a genially-abrupt 
man, a Utilitarian and Democrat by creed ; yet beyond 
all things he loved Chaucer, and kept reading him ; a man 
rather tacit than discursive, but willing to speak, and doing 
it well, in a fine, tinkling, mellow-toned voice, in an in- 
genious aphoristic way ; had, withal, a pretty vein of quiz, 
which he seldom indulged in ; a man sharply impatient of 
pretence, of sham and untruth in all forms ; especially 
contemptuous of quality pretensions and affectations, which 
he scattered grinningly to the winds. Dressed in the sim- 
plest form, he walked daily to the India House and back, 
though there were fine carriages in store for the woman 
part; scorned cheerfully "the general humbug of the 
world," and honestly strove to do his own bit of duty, 
spiced by Chaucer and what else of inward harmony or 
condiment he had. Of religion in articulate shape he had 
none, but much respected his wife's, whom and whose 
truthfulness in that as in all things, he tenderly esteemed 
and loved ; a man of many qualities comfortable to be 
near. At his house, both in town and here, I have seen 
pleasant graceful people, whose style of manners, if nothing 
else, struck me as new and superior. 

Mrs. Strachey took to me from the first, nor ever 



17^ EDWARD IRVING. 

swerved. It strikes me now more than it then did, she 
silently could have liked to see '* dear Kitty" and myself 
come together, and so continue near her, both of us, 
through life. The good kind soul ! And Kitty, too, was 
charming in her beautiful Begum sort ; had wealth abun- 
dant, and might, perhaps have been charmed ? None 
knows. She had one of the prettiest smiles, a visible sense 
of humour, the shght merry curl of her upper lip (right side 
of it only), the carriage of her head and eyes on such oc- 
casions, the quiet little things she said in that kind, and 
her low-toned hearty laugh were noticeable. This was 
perhaps her most spiritual quality. Of developed intel- 
lect she had not much, though not wanting in discernment ; 
amiable, affectionate, graceful ; might be called attractive ; 
not slim enough for the title " pretty," not tall enough for 
*' beautiful ; " had something low-voiced, languidly har- 
monious, placid, sensuous ; loved perfumes, etc. ; a half- 
Begum ; in short, an interesting specimen "of the semi- 
oriental Englishwoman. Still lives ! — near Exeter ; the 
wife of some ex-captain of Sepoys, with many children, 
whom she watches over with a passionate instinct ; and 
has not quite forgotten me, as I had evidence once in late 
years, thanks to her kind little heart. 

The Montague establishment (25 Bedford Square) was 
still more notable, and as unlike this as possible ; might 
be defined, not quite satirically, as a most singular social 
and spiritual menagerie ; which, indeed, was well known 
and much noted and criticised in certain literary and other 
circles. Basil Montague, a Chancery barrister in excel- 
lent practice, hugely a sage, too, busy all his days upon 



EDWARD IRVING. 1/7 

' Bacon's Works," and continually preaching a superfinish 
morality about benevolence, munificence, health, peace, 
unfailing happiness. Much a bore to you by degrees, 
and considerably a humbug if you probed too strictly. 
Age at this time might be about sixty ; good middle 
stature, face rather fine under its grizzled hair, brow very 
prominent ; wore oftenest a kind of smile, not false or 
consciously so, but insignificant, and as if feebly defensive 
against the intrusions of a rude world. On going to 
Hinchinbrook long after, I found he was strikingly like 
the dissolute, questionable Earl of Sandwich (Foote's 
"Jeremy Diddler ") ; who, indeed, had been father of 
him in a highly tragic way. His mother, pretty Miss 
Reay, carefully educated for that function ; Rev. ex- 
dragoon Hackman taking this so dreadfully to heart that, 
being if not an ex-lover, a lover (bless the mark !) he shot 
her as she came out of Urury Lane Theatre one night, 
and got well hanged for it. The stor>- is musty rather, 
and there is a loose foolish old book upon it called " Love 
and Madness," which is not worth reading. Poor Basil ! 
no wonder he had his peculiarities, coming by such a 
genesis, and a life of his own which had been brimful of 
difficulties and confusions ! It cannot be said he managed 
it ill, but far the contrary', all things considered. No- 
body can deny that he wished all the world rather well, 
could wishing have done it. Express malice against any- 
body or anything he seldom or never showed. I myself 
experienced much kind flatterv* (if that were a benefit)^ 
much soothing treatment in his house, and learned several 
things there which were of use afterwards, and not alloyed 

12 



178 EDWARD IRVING. 

by the least harm done me. But it was his wife, the 
** noble lady," who in all senses presided there, to whom 
I stand debtor, and should be thankful for all this. 

Basil had been thrice married. Children of all his 
marriages, and one child of the now Mrs. Montagu's own 
by a previous marriage, were present in the house ; a 
most difficult miscellany. The one son of B.'s first mar- 
riage we have already dined with, and indicated that he 
soon ended by a bad road. Still worse the three sons of 
the second marriage, dandy young fellows by this time, 
who went all and sundry to the bad, the youngest and 
luckiest soon to a madJioitse ^ where he probably still is. 
Nor were the two boys of Mrs. Montagu Tertia a good 
kind ; thoroughly vain or even proud, and with a spice 
of angry falsity discernible amid their showy talents. 
They grew up only to go astray and be unlucky. Both 
long since are dead, or gone out of sight. Only the eldest 
child, Emily, the single daughter Basil had, succeeded in 
the world ; made a good match (in Turin country some- 
where), and is still doing well. Emily was Basil's only 
daughter, but she was not his wife's only one. Mrs. 
Montagu had by her former marriage, which had been 
brief, one daughter, six or eight years older than Emily 
Montagu. Anne Skepper the name of this one, and 
York or Yorkshire her birthplace ; a brisk, witty, pretty- 
ish, sufficiently clear-eyed and sharp-tongued young lady ; 
bride, or affianced, at this time, of the poet ''Barry Corn- 
wall," i.e. Brian W. Procter, whose wife, both of them 
still prosperously living (i860), she now is. Anne rather 
liked me, I her ; an evidently true, sensible, and practical 



EDWARD IRVING. 1 79 

young lady in a house considerably in want of such an 
article. She was the fourth genealogic species among 
those children, visibly the eldest, all but Basil's first son 
now gone ; and did, and might well pass for, the flower 
of the collection. 

Ruling such a miscellany of a household, with Basil 
Montagu at the head, and an almost still stranger miscel- 
laneous society that fluctuated through it, Mrs. Montagu 
had a problem like few others. But she, if anyone, was 
equal to it. A more constant and consummate artist in 
that kind you could nowhere meet with ; truly a remark- 
able and partly a high and tragical woman ; now about 
fifty, with the remains of a certain queenly beauty which 
she still took strict care of. A tall, rather thin figure'; a 
face pale, intelligent, and penetrating ; nose fine, rather 
large, and decisiv^ely Roman ; pair of bright, not soft, but 
sharp and small black eyes, with a cold smile as of enquiry 
in them ; fine brow ; fine chin (both rather prominent) ; 
thin lips — lips always gently shut, as if till the enquiry 
were completed, and the time came for something of royal 
speech upon it. She had a slight Yorkshire accent, but 
spoke — Dr. Hugh Blair could not have picked a hole in 
it — and you might have printed every word, so queen- 
like, gentle, soothing, measured, prettily royal towards 
subjects whom she wished to love her. The voice v/as 
modulated, low, not inharmonious ; yet there was some- 
thing of metallic in it, akin to that smile in the eyes. 
One durst not quite love' this high personage as she 
wished to be loved ! Her very dress was notable ; always 
the same, and in a fashion of its own ; kind of widow's 



l80 EDWARD IRVING. 

cap fastened below the chin, darkish puce-coloured silk 
all the rest, and (I used to hear from one who knew !) 
was admirable, and must have required daily the fasten- 
ing of sixty or eighty pins. 

There were many criticisms of Mrs. Montagu — often 
angry ones ; but the truth is she did love and aspire to 
human excellence, and her road to it was no better than 
a steep hill of jingling boulders and sliding sand. There 
remained therefore nothing, if you still aspired, but to 
succeed, ill and put the best face on it. Which she amply 
did. I have heard her speak of the Spartan boy who let 
the fox hidden under his robe eat him, rather than rob 
him of his honour from the theft. 

In early life she had made some visit to Nithsdale (to 
the *^ Craiks of Arligsland "), and had seen Burns, of 
whom her worship continued fervent, her few recollec- 
tions always a jewel she was ready to produce. She must 
have been strikingly beautiful at that time, and Burns's 
recognition and adoration would not be wanting ; the 
most royally courteous of mankind she always defined 
him, as the first mark of his genius. I think I have heard 
that, at a ball at Dumfries, she had frugally constructed 
some dress by sewing real flowers upon it ; and shone by 
that bit of art, and by her fine bearing, as the cynosure 
of all eyes. Her father, I gradually understood, not from 
herself, had been a man of inconsiderable wealth or posi- 
tion, a wine merchant in York, his name Benson. Her 
first husband, Mr. Skepper, some young lawyer there, 
of German extraction ; and that the romance of her wed- 
ding Montagu, which she sometimes touched on, had 



EDWARD IRVING. l8l 

been prosaically nothing but this. Seeing herself, on 
Skepper's death, left destitute with a young girl, she con- 
sented to take charge of Montagu's motherless confused 
family under the name of " governess," bringing her own 
little Anne as appendage. Had succeeded well, and bet- 
ter and better, for some time, perhaps some years, in that 
ticklish capacity ; whereupon at length offer of marriage, 
which she accepted. Her sovereignty in the house had 
to be soft, judicious, politic, but it was constant and valid, 
felt to be beneficial withal. '' She is like one in command 
of a mutinous ship which is ready to take fire," Irving 
once said to me. By this time he had begun to discover 
that this ** noble lady" was in essentiality an artist, and 
hadn't perhaps so much loved him as tried to buy love 
from him by soft ministrations, by the skilfullest flattery 
liberally laid on. He continued always to look kindly 
towards her, but had now, or did by-and-by, let drop the 
old epithet. Whether she had done him good or ill 
would be hard to say ; ill perhaps ! In this liberal Lon- 
don, pitch your sphere one step lower than yourself, and 
you can get what amount of flattery you will consent to. 
Everybody has it, like paper money, for the printing, and 
will buy a small amount of ware by any quantity of it. 
The generous Irving did not find out this so soon as some 
surlier fellows of us ! 

On one of the first fine mornings, Mrs. Montague, 
along with Irving, took me out to see Coleridge at High- 
gate. My impressions of the man and of the place are 
conveyed faithfully enough in the "Life of Sterling ; " 
that first interview in particular, of which I had expected 



l82 EDWARD IRVING. 

very little, was idle and unsatisfactory, and yielded me 
nothing. Coleridge, a puffy, anxious, obstructed-look- 
ing, fattish old man, hobbled about with us, talking with 
a kind of solemn emphasis on matters which were of no 
interest (and even reading pieces in proof of his opinions 
thereon). I had him to myself once or twice, in various 
parts of the garden walks, and tried hard to get some- 
thing about Kant and Co. from him, about ** reason " 
versus " understanding" and the Hke, but in vain. Noth- 
ing came from him that was of use to me that day, or in 
fact any day. The sight and sound of a sage who was so 
venerated by those about me, and whom I too would will- 
ingly have venerated, but could not — this was all. Sev- 
eral times afterwards, Montagu, on Coleridge's " Thurs- 
day evenings," carried Irving and me out, and returned 
blessing Heaven (I not) for what he had received. Irving 
and I walked out more than once on mornings too, and 
found the Dodona oracle humanly ready to act, but never 
to me, or Irving either I suspect, explanatory of the 
question put. Good Irving strove always to think that 
he was getting priceless wisdom out of this great man, 
but must have had his misgivings. Except by the Mon- 
tagu Irving channel, I at no time communicated with 
Coleridge. I had never on my own strength had much 
esteem for him, and found slowly in spite of myself that 
I was getting to have less and less. Early in 1825 was 
my last sight of him ; a print of Porson brought some 
trifling utterance : "■ Sensuality such a dissolution of the 
features of a man's face ; " and I remember nothing more. 
On my second visit to London (autumn 1830) Irving and 



J 



EDWARD IRVING. 1 83 

I had appointed a day for a pilgrimage to Highgate, but 
the day was one rain deluge and we couldn't even try. 
Soon after our settling here (late in 1834) Coleridge was 
reported to be dying, and died ; I had seen the last of 
him almost a decade ago. 

A great " worship of genius " habitually went on at 
Montagu's, from self and wife especially ; Coleridge the 
head of the Lares there, though he never appeared in 
person, but only wrote a word or two of note on occa- 
sions. A confused dim miscellany of ** geniuses '' (mostly 
nondescript and harmlessly useless) hovered fitfully about 
the establishment ; I think those of any reality had tired 
and gone away. There was much talk and laud of Charles 
Lamb and his Pepe etc., but he never appeared. At his 
own house I saw him once ; once I gradually felt to 
have been enough for me. Poor Lamb I such a "divine 
genius" you could find in the London world only! 
Hazlitt, whom I had a kind of curiosity about, was not 
now of the "admitted" (such the hint); at any rate 
kept strictly away. There was a " Crabbe Robinson," 
who had been in Weimar etc., who was first of the " Ovrn 
Correspondents" now so numerous. This is now his 
real distinction. There was a ^Ir. Fearn, " profound 
in mataphysics " ("dull utterly and dry"). There was 
a Dr. Sir Anthony Carlile, of name in medicine, na- 
tive oi Durham and a hard-headed fellow, but Utili- 
tarian to the bone, who had defined poetry to Irving 
once as " the prodooction of a rude aage.'' We were 
clansmen, he and I, but had nothing of mutual attrac- 
tion, nor of repulsion either, for the man didn't want for 



1 84 EDWARD IRVING. 

shrewd sense in his way. I heard continual talk and 
admiration of "the grand old English writers" (Fuller, 
Sir Thomas Browne, and various others — Milton more 
rarely) ; this was the orthodox strain. But there was 
little considerable of actual knowledge, and of critical 
appreciation almost nothing at the back of it anywhere ; 
and in the end it did one next to no good, yet per- 
haps not quite none, deducting in accurate balance all 
the ill that might be in it. 

Nobody pleased m.e so much in this miscellany as 
Procter (Barry Cornwall), who for the fair Anne Skepper's 
sake was very constantly there. Anne and he were to 
have been, and were still to be married, but some dis- 
aster or entanglement in Procter's attorney business had 
occurred (some partner defalcating or the like), and 
Procter, in evident distress and dispiritment, was waiting 
the slow conclusion of this ; which and the wedding there- 
upon happily took place in the winter following. A 
decidedly rather pretty little fellow Procter, bodily and 
spiritually ; manners prepossessing, slightly London-ele- 
gant, not unpleasant; clear judgment in him, though of 
narrow field ; a sound honourable morality, and airy 
friendly ways ; of slight neat figure, vigorous for his size ; 
fine genially rugged little face, fine head ; something 
curiously dreamy in the eyes of him, lids drooping at the 
outer ends into a cordially meditative and drooping ex- 
pression ; would break out suddenly now and then into 
opera attitude and a La ca dame la mano for a moment ; 
had something of real fun, though in London style. Me 
he had invited to *' his garret," as he called it, and was 



EDWARD IRVING. 1 85 

always good and kind and so continues, though I hardly 
see him once in a quarter of a century. 

The next to Procter in my esteem, and the consid- 
erably more important to me just then, was a young Mr. 
Badams, in great and romantic estimation there, and 
present every now and then, though his place and business 
lay in Birmingham ; a most cheery, gifted, really amiable 
man, with whom not long afterwards I more or less 
romantically went to Birmingham, and though not cured 
of "dyspepsia" there (alas, not the least) had two or 
three singular and interesting months, as will be seen. 

Irving's preaching at Hatton Garden, which I regularly 
attended while in his house, and occasionally afterwards, 
did not strike me as superior to his Scotch performances 
of past time, or, in private fact, inspire me with any com- 
plete or pleasant feeling. Assent to them I could not, 
except under very wide reservations, nor, granting all his 
postulates, did either matter or manner carry me captive, 
or at any time perfect my admiration. The force and 
weight of what he urged was undeniable ; the potent 
faculty at work, like that of a Samson heavily striding 
along with the gates of Gaza on his shoulders ; but there 
was a want of spontaneity and simplicity, a something of 
strained and aggravated, of elaborately intentional, which 
kept gaining on the mind. One felt the bad element to 
be and to have been unwholesome to the honourable soul. 
The doors were crowded long before opening, and you 
got in by ticket ; but the first sublime rush of what once 
seemed more than popularity, and had been nothing more 
— Lady Jersey ** sitting on the pulpit steps," Canning, 



1 86 EDWARD IRVING. 

Brougham, Mackintosh, etc. rushing day after day — was 
now quite over, and there remained only a popularity of 
"the people; " not of the plebs at all, but never higher 
than of the well-dressed popuhis henceforth, which was a 
sad change to the sanguine man. One noticed that he 
was not happy, but anxious, struggling, questioning the 
future ; happiness, alas, he was no more to have, even in 
the old measure, in this world ! At sight of Canning, 
Brougham, Lady Jersey and Co., crowding round him 
and listening week after week as if to the message of 
salvation, the noblest and joyfuUest thought (I know this 
on perfect authority) had taken possession of his noble, 
too sanguine, and too trustful mind ; '* that the Christian 
religion was to be a truth again, not a paltry form, and 
to rule the world, he unworthy, even he, the chosen in- 
strument." Mrs. Strachey, who had seen him in her own 
house in these moods, spoke to me once of this, and only 
once, reporting some of his expressions with an affec- 
tionate sorrow. Cruelly blasted all these hopes were, but 
Irving never to the end of his hfe could consent to give 
them up. That was the key to all his subsequent pro- 
cedures, extravagances, aberrations, so far as I could 
understand them. Whatever of blame (and there was on 
the surface a fond credulity, or perhaps, farther down, and 
as root to such credulity, some excess of self-love, which 
I define always as love that others should love him, 7iot 
as any worse kind), with that degree of blame Irving 
must stand charged, with that and with no more, so far 
as I could testify or understand. 

Good Mrs. Oliphant, and probably her public, have 



EDWARD IRVING. 1 8/ 

much mistaken me on this point. That Irving to the very 
last had abundant " popularity," and confluence of auditors 
sufficient for the largest pulpit " vanity," I knew and 
know, but also that his own immeasurable and quasi- 
celestial hope remained cruelly blasted, refusing the least 
bud farther, and that without this all else availed him 
nothing. Fallacious semblances of bud it did shoot out 
again and again, under his continual fostering and forcing, 
but real bud never more, and the case in itself is easy to 
understand. 

He had much quiet seriousness, beautiful piety and 
charity, in this bud time of agitation and disquietude, and 
I was often honestly sorry for him. Here was still the old 
true man, and his new element seemed so false and abom- 
inable. Honestly, though not so purely, sorry as now, 
now when element and man are alike gone, and all that 
was or partook of paltry in one's own view of them is also 
mournfully gone ! He had endless patience with the 
mean people crowding about him and jostling his life to 
pieces ; hoped always they were not so mean ; never 
complained of the uncomfortable huggermugger his life 
was now grown to be ; took everything, wife, serv^ants, 
guests, by the most favourable handle. He had infinite 
delight in a little baby boy there now was ; went dandling 
it about in his giant arms, tick-ticking to it, laughing and 
playing to it ; would turn seriously round to me with a 
face sorrowful rather than otherwise, and say, "Ah, 
Carlyle, this little creature has been sent to me to soften 
my hard heart, which did need it." 

Towards all distressed people not absolutely criminals, 



l88 EDWARD IRVING. 

his kindness, frank helpfulness, long-suffering, and assidu- 
ity, were in truth wonderful to me ; especially in one 
case, that of a Reverend Mr. Macbeth, which I thought 
ill of from the first, and which did turn out hopeless. 
Macbeth was a Scotch preacher, or licentiate, who had 
failed of a kirk, as he had deserved to do, thous;h his 
talents were good, and was now hanging very miscel- 
laneously on London, with no outlooks that were not 
bog meteors, and a steadily increasing tendency to 
strong drink. He knew town well, and its babble and 
bits of temporary cynosures, and frequented haunts 
good and perhaps bad ; took me one evening to the 
poet Campbell's, whom I had already seen, but not suc- 
cessfully. 

Macbeth had a sharp sarcastic, clever kind of tongue ; 
not much real knowledge, but was amusing to talk with 
on a chance walk through the streets ; older than myself 
by a dozen years or more. Like him I did not; there 
was nothing of wisdom, generosity, or worth in him, but 
in secret, evidently discernible, a great deal of bankrupt 
vanity which had taken quite the malignant shape. Unde- 
niable envy, spite, and oitterness looked through every 
part of him. A taUish, slouching, lean figure, face sorrow- 
ful malignant, black, not unlike the picture of a devil. 
To me he had privately much the reverse of liking. I 
have seen him in Irving's and elsewhere (perhaps with a 
little drink on his stomach, poor soul !) break out into 
oblique little spurts of positive spite, which I understood 
to mean merely, "Young Jackanapes, getting yourself 
noticed and honoured while a mature man of genius is 



EDWARD IRVING. 1 89 

etc. etc.!" and took no notice of, to the silent comfort 
of self and neighbours. 

This broken Macbeth had been hanging a good while 
about Irving, who had taken much earnest pains to rescue 
and arrest him on the edge of the precipices, but latterly 
had begun to see that it was hopeless, and had rather left 
him to his own bad courses. One evening, it was in dirty 
winter w^eather and I was present, there came to Irving 
or to Mrs. Irving, dated from some dark tavern in the 
Holborn precincts, a piteous little note from Macbeth. 
"Ruined again (tempted, O how cunningly, to my old 
sin) ; been drinking these three weeks, and now have a 
chalk-score and no money, and can't get out. Oh, help 
a perishing sinner ! " The majority was of opinion, 
" Pshaw ! it is totally useless ! " but Irving after some 
minutes of serious consideration decided, '• No, not to- 
tally ; " and directly got into a hackney coach, wife and 
he, proper moneys in pocket, paid the poor devil's tavern 
score (some 2/. lOs. or so, if I remember) and brought 
him groaning home out of his purgatory again : for he 
was in much bodily suffering too. I remember to have 
been taken up to see him one evening in his bedroom 
(^comfortable airy place) a week or two after. He was in 
clean dressing-gown and night-cap, walking about the 
floor ; afifected to turn away his face and be quite 
"ashamed" when Irving introduced me, which as I could 
discern it to be painful hypocrisy merely, forbade my 
visit to be other than quite brief. Comment I made none 
here or downstairs ; was actually a little sorry, but with- 
out hope, and rather think this was my last sight of Mac- 



1 90 EDWARD IRVING. 

beth. Another time, which could not now be distant, 
when he lay again under chalk-score and bodily sickness 
in his drinking shop, there would be no deliverance but 
to the hospital ; and there I suppose the poor creature 
tragically ended. He was not without talent, had written 
a '* Book on the Sabbath," better or worse, and I almost 
think was understood, with all his impenitences and ma- 
lignities, to have real love for his poor old Scotch mother. 
After that night in his clean airy bedroom I have no re- 
collection or tradition of him — a vanished quantity, hardly 
once in my thoughts for above forty years past. There 
were other disastrous or unpleasant figures whom I met 
at Irving's ; a Danish fanatic of Calvinistic species (re- 
peatedly, and had to beat him off), a good many fanatics 
of different kinds — one insolent ''Bishop of Toronto," 
triumphant Canadian but Aberdeen by dialect (once only, 
from whom Irving defended me), etc., etc. ; but of these I 
say nothing. Irving, though they made his house-element 
and life-element continually muddy for him, was endlessly 
patient with them all. 

This my first visit to London lasted with interruptions 
from early June 1824 till March 1825, during which I re- 
peatedly lodged for a little while at Irving's, his house 
ever open to me like a brother's, but cannot now recollect 
the times or their circumstances. The above recollections 
extend vaguely over the whole period, during the last 
four or five months of which I had my own rooms in 
Southampton Street near by, and was still in almost con- 
stant familiarity. My own situation was very wretched ; 
primarily from a state of health which nobody could be 



EDWARD IRVING. IQI 

expected to understand or sympathise with, and about 
which I had as much as possible to be silent. The ac- 
cursed hag '* Dyspepsia" had got me bitted and bridled, 
and was ever striving to make my w^aking living day a 
thing of ghastly nightmares. I resisted what I could ; 
never did yield or surrender to her ; but she kept my 
heart right heavy, my battle very sore and hopeless. One 
could not call it hope but only desperate obstinacy refus- 
ing to flinch that animated me. '* Obstinacy as of ten 
mules " I have sometimes called it since ; but in candid 
truth there was something worthily Juunan in it too ; and 
I have had through life, among my manifold unspeakable 
blessings, no other real bower anchor to ride by in the 
rough seas. Human " obstinacy" grounded on real faith 
and insight is good and the best. 

All was change, too, at this time with me, all un- 
certainty. Mrs. Buller, the bright, the ardent, the airy, 
was a changeful lady ! The original programme had 
been, w^e were all to shift to Cornwall, live in some beau- 
tiful Buller cottage there was about East Looe or West 
(on her eldest brother-in-law's property). With this 
as a fixed thing I had arrived in London, asking my- 
self "what kind of a thing will it be?" It proved to 
have become already a thing of all the winds ; gone like 
a dream of the night (by some accident or other !) For 
four or five weeks coming there was new scheme, fol- 
lowed always by newer and newest, all of which proved 
successively inexecutable, greatly to my annoyance and 
regret, as may be imagined. The only thing that did 
ever take effect was the shifting of Charles and me out to 



192 



EDWARD IRVING. 



solitary lodgings at Kew Green, an isolating of us two 
{^pro tempore) over our lessons there, one of the dreariest 
and uncomfortablest things to both of us. It lasted for 
about a fortnight, till Charles, I suppose privately plead- 
ing, put an end to it as intolerable and useless both (for 
one could not '' study" but only pretend to do it in such 
an element !) Other wild projects rose rapidly, rapidly 
vanished futile. The end was, in a week or two after, I 
deliberately counselled that Charles should go direct for 
Cambridge next term, in the meantime making ready 
under some fit college *' grinder ; " I myself not without 
regret taking leave of the enterprise. Which proposal, 
after some affectionate resistance on the part of Charles, 
was at length (rather suddenly, I recollect) acceded to by 
the elder people, and one bright summer morning (stitl 
vivid to me) I stept out of a house in Foley Place, with 
polite farewell sounding through me, and the thought as 
I walked along Regent Street, that here I was without 
employment henceforth. Money was no longer quite 
wanting, enough of money for some time to come, but 
the question what to do next was not a little embarrass- 
ing, and indeed was intrinsically abstruse enough. 

I must have been lodging again with Irving when this 
finale came. I recollect Charles Buller &nd I, a day or 
some days after quitting Kew, had rendezvoused by ap- 
pointment in Regent Square (St. Pancras), where Irving 
and a great company were laying the foundation of 
" Caledonian Chapel " (which still stands there), and 
Irving of course had to deliver an address. Of the ad- 
dress, which was going on when we arrived, I could hear 



EDWARD IRVING. I93 

nothing, such the confusing crowd and the unfavourable 
locaHty (a muddy chaos of rubbish and excavations, Ir- 
ving and the actors shut off from us by a circle of rude 
bricklayers' planks) ; but I well remember Irving's glow- 
ing face, streaming hair, and deeply moved tones as he 
spoke ; and withal that Charles BuUer brought me some 
new futility of a proposal, and how sad he looked, good 
youth, when I had directly to reply with " No, alas, I 
cannot, Charles." This was but a few days before the 
Buller finale. 

Twenty years after, riding discursively towards Tot- 
tenham one summer evening, with the breath of the wind 
from northward, and London hanging to my right hand 
like a grim and vast sierra, I saw among the peaks, as 
easily ascertainable, the high minarets of that chapel, and 
thought with myself, '* Ah, you fatal tombsto7ie of my 
lost friend ! and did a soul so strong and high avail only 
to build yoti ? " and felt sad enough and rather angry in 
looking at the thing. 

It was not many days after this of the Regent Square 
address, which was quickly followed by termination with 
the BuUers, that I found myself one bright Sunday morn- 
ing on the top of a swift coach for Birmingham, with in- 
tent towards the Mr. Badams above mentioned, and 
a considerable visit there, for health's sake mainly. 
Badams and the Montagues had eagerly proposed and 
counselled this step. Badams himself was so eager about 
it, and seemed so frank, cheery, ingenious, and friendly a 
man that I had listened to his pleadings with far more 
regard than usual in such a case, and without assenting 
13 



J 94 EDWARD IRVING. 

had been seriously considering the proposal for some 
weeks before (during the Kew Green seclusion and per- 
haps earlier). He was in London twice or thrice while 
things hung in deliberation, and was each time more 
eager and persuasive on me. In fine I had assented, and 
was rolling along through sunny England— the first con- 
siderable space I had yet seen of it — with really pleasant 
recognition of its fertile beauties and air of long-con- 
tinued cleanliness, contentment, and well-being. Stony 
Stratford, Fenny Stratford, and the good people coming 
out of church, Coventry, etc., etc., all this is still a pic- 
ture. Our coach was of the swiftest in the world ; ap- 
pointments perfect to a hair ; one and a half minutes the 
time allowed for changing horses ; our coachman, in 
dress, etc., resembled a " sporting gentleman," and 
scornfully called any groundling whom he disliked, " You 
Radical ! " for one symptom. I don't remember a finer 
ride, as if on the arrow of Abaris, with lips shut and 
nothing to do but look. My reception at Ashsted (west 
end of Birmingham, not far from the great Watt's house 
of that name), and instalment in the Badams* domestici- 
ties, must have well corresponded to my expectations, as 
I have now no memory of it. My visit in whole, which 
lasted for above three months, may be pronounced inter- 
esting, idle, pleasant, and successful, though singular. 

Apart from the nimbus of Montague romance in the 
first accounts I had got of Badams, he was a gifted, 
amiable, and remarkable man, who proved altogether 
friendly and beneficent, so far as he went, with me, and 
whose final history, had I time for it, would be tragical in 



EDWARD IRVING. 195 

its kind. He was eldest boy of a well-doing but not 
opulent master-workman (plumber, I think) in Warwick 
town ; got marked for the ready talents he showed, 
especially for some picture he had on his own resources 
and unaided inventions copied in the Warwick Castle 
<rallerv with " wonderful success " ; and in fine was taken 
hold of by the famous Dr. Parr and others of that vicin- 
ity, and lived some time as one of Parr's scholars in 
Parr's house ; learning I know not what, not taking very 
kindly to the CEolic digamma department I should appre- 
hend ! He retained a kindly and respectful remem- 
brance about this Trismegistus of the then pedants, but 
always in brief quizzical form. Having declared for med- 
icine he was sent to Edinburgh College, studied there 
for one session or more; but "being desirous to marry 
some beautiful lady-love " (said the Montagues), or other- 
wise determined on a shorter road to fortune, he now cut 
loose from his patrons, and modestly planted himself in 
Birmingham, with purpose of turning to account some 
chemical ideas he had gathered in the classes here ; rival- 
ling of French green vitriol by purely English methods 
("no husks of grapes for you and your vitriol, ye Eng- 
lish ; your vitriol only half the selling price of ours ! ") 
that I believe was it, and Badams had fairly succeeded in 
it and in other branches of the colour business, and had a 
manufactory of twenty or fewer hands, full of thrifty and 
curious ingenuity ; at the outer corner of which, fronting 
on two streets, was his modest but comfortable dwelling- 
house, where I now lived with him as guest. Simplicity 
and a pure and direct aim at the essential (aim good and 



196 EDWARD IRVING. 

generally successful), that was our rule in this establish- 
ment, which was and continued always innocently com- 
fortable and home-like to me. The lowest floor, opening 
rearward of the manufactory, was exclusively given up to 
an excellent Mrs. Barnet (with husband and family of 
two), who in perfection and in silence kept house to us ; 
her husband, whom Badams only tolerated for her sake, 
working out of doors among the twenty. We lived in 
the two upper floors, entering from one street door, and 
wearing a modestly civilised air. Everything has still a 
living look to me in that place ; not even the bad Barnet, 
who never showed his badness, but has claims on me ; 
still more the venerable lean and brown old grandfather 
Barnet, who used to '^ go for our letters," and hardly 
ever spoke except by his fine and mournful old eyes. 
These Barnets, with the workmen generally, and their 
quiet steady ways, were pleasant to observe, but espe- 
cially our excellent, sad, pure, and silent Mrs. Barnet, 
correct as an eight-day clock, and making hardly as 
much noise ! Always dressed in modest black, tall, 
clean, well-looking, light of foot and hand. She was 
very much loved by Badams as a friend of his mother's 
and a woman of real worth, bearing well a heavy enough 
load of sorrows (chronic disease of the heart to crown 
them he would add). I remember the sight of her, one 
afternoon, in some lighted closet there was, cutting out 
the bit of bread for the children's luncheon, two dear 
pretty little girls who stood looking up with hope, her 
silence and theirs, and the fine human relation between 
them, as one of my pleasant glimpses into EngHsh hum- 



EDWARD IRVING. I97 

ble life. The younger of these pretty children died with- 
in few years; the elder, ** Bessy Barnet," a creature of 
distinguished faculties who has had intricate vicissitudes 
and fortunate escapes, stayed with us here as our first ser- 
vant (servant and friend both in one) for about a year, 
then went home, and after long and complete disappear- 
ance from our thoughts and affairs, re-emerged, most 
modestly triumphant, not ver>^ long ago, as wife of the 
accomplished Dr. Blakiston of Leamington ; in which 
capacity she showed a generous exaggerated " gratitude " 
to her old mistress and me, and set herself and her hus- 
band unweariedly to help in that our sad Leamington 
season of woe and toil, which has now ended in eternal 
peace to one of us. Nor can Dr. B.'s and his " Bessy's" 
kindness in it ever be forgotten while the other of us still 
lingers here ! Ah me ! ah me ! 

My Birmingham visit, except as it continually kept me 
riding about in the open air, did nothing for me in the 
anti-dyspeptic way, but in the social and spiritually con- 
solatory* way it was really of benefit- Badams was a 
horse fancier, skilful on horseback, kept a choice two or 
three of horses here, and in theory* professed the obliga- 
tion to " ride for health," but ver>^ seldom by himself did 
it — it was always along with me, and not one tenth part 
so often as I during this sojourn. With me red ** Taffy," 
the briskest of Welsh ponies, went galloping daily far 
and wide, unless I were still better mounted (for exercise 
of the other high-going sort), and many were the pleasant 
rides I had in the Warwickshire lanes and heaths, and 
real good they did me, if Badams's medicinal and dietetic 



1 98 EDWARD IRVING. 

formalities (to which I strictly conformed) did me little or 
none. His unaffected kindness, and cheerful human soci- 
ality and friendliness, manifest at all times, could not but 
be of use to me too. Seldom have I seen a franker, 
trustier, cheerier form of human kindliness than Ba- 
dams's. How I remember the laughing eyes and sunny 
figure of him breaking into my room on mornings, him- 
self half-dressed (waistband in hand was a common as- 
pect, and hair all flying). ** What ! not up yet, mon- 
ster ? " The smile of his eyes, the sound of his voice, 
were so bright and practically true on these occasions. 
A tight, middle-sized, handsome kind of man, eyes blue, 
sparkling soft, nose and other features inclining to the 
pointed, complexion, which was the weak part, tending 
rather to bluish, face always shaven bare and no whiskers 
left ; a man full of hope, full of natural intellect, inge- 
nuity, invention, essentially a gentleman ; and really 
looked well and jauntily aristocratic when dressed for 
riding or the like, which was always a careful prehminary. 
Slight rusticity of accent rather did him good ; so prompt, 
mildly emphatic and expressive were the words that came 
from him. His faults were a too sanguine temper, and a 
defective inner sternness of veracity : true he Avas, but 
not sternly enough, and would listen to imagination and 
delusive hopes when Fact said No — for which two faults, 
partly recognisable to me even then, I little expected he 
would by and by pay so dear. 

We had a pleasant time together, many pleasant sum- 
mer rides, and outdoor talks and in ; to Guy's Cliff, War- 
wick Castle, Sutton Coldfield, or Kenilworth, etc., on 



EDWARD IRVING. I99 

holidays ; or miscellaneously over the furzy heaths and 
leafy ruralities on common evenings. I remember well a 
ride we made to Kenilworth one Saturday afternoon by 
the " wood of Arden " and its monstrous old oaks, on to 
the famous ruin itself {fresh in the Scott novels then), 
and a big jolly farmer of Badams's, who lodged us — nice 
polite wife and he in a finely human way — till Monday 
morning, with much talk about old Parr, in whose parish 
(Hatton) we then were. Old Parr would have been de- 
sirabler to me than the great old ruin (now mainly a skel- 
eton, part of it a coarse farm-house, which was the most 
interesting part). But Badams did not propose a call on 
his old pedant friend, and I could not be said to regret 
the omission ; a saving of so much trouble withal. There 
was a sort of pride felt in their Dr. Parr all over this re- 
gion ; yet everybody seemed to consider him a ridiculous 
old fellow, whose strength of intellect was mainly gone to 
self-will and fantasticality. They all mimicked his lispy 
and talked of wig and tobacco-pipe. (No pipe, no Parr ! 
his avowed principle when asked to dinner among fine 
people.) The old man came to Edinburgh on a visit to 
Dr. Gregory, perhaps the very next year ; and there, too, 
for a year following there lingered traditions of good- 
natured grins and gossip, which one heard of; but the 
man himself I never saw, nor, though rather liking him, 
sensibly cared to see. 

Another very memorable gallop (we always went at 
galloping or cantering pace, and Badams was proud of 
his cattle and their really great prowess), was one morn- 
ing out to Hagley ; to the top of the Clent Hill for a 



200 EDWARD IRVING. 

view, after breakfast at Hagley Tap, and then return. 
Distance from Birmingham about seventeen miles. "The 
Leasowes " (Poet Shenstone's place), is about midway 
(visible enough to left in the level sun-rays as you gallop 
out) ; after which comes a singular Terra di Lavoro — or 
wholly metallic country — Hales Owen the heart of it. 
Thick along the wayside, little forges built of single brick, 
hardly bigger than sentry-boxes ; and in each of them, 
with bellows, stake, and hammer a woman busy making 
nails ; fine tall young women several of them, old others, 
but all in clean aprons, clean white cahco jackets (must 
have been Monday morning), their look industrious and 
patient. Seems as if all the nails in the world were get- 
ting made here on very unexpected terms ! Hales Owen 
itself had much sunk under the improved highway, but 
was cheerfully jingHng as we cantered through. Hagley 
Tap and its quiet green was all our own ; not to be 
matched out of England. Lord Lyttelton's mansion I 
have ever since in my eye as a noble-looking place, when 
his lordship comes athwart me ; a rational, ruggedly-con- 
siderate kind of man whom I could have liked to see 
there (as he was good enough to wish), had there been a 
Fortunatus travelling carpet at my disposal. Smoke pil- 
lars many, in a definite straight or spiral shape ; the Dud- 
ley ''Black Country," under favorable omens, visible 
from the Clent Hill ; after which, and the aristocratic roof 
works, attics, and grand chimney tops of Hagley man- 
sion, the curtain quite drops. 

Of persons also I met some notable or quasi-notable. 
** Joe " Parkes, then a small Birmingham attorney, after- 



EDWARD IRVING. 201 

wards the famous Reform Club ditto, was a visitor at 
Badams's on rare evenings ; a rather pleasant-talking, 
shrewd enough little fellow, with bad teeth, and a knowing 
flighty satirical way ; whom Badams thought little of, but 
tolerated for his (Joe's) mother's sake, as he did Parkes 
senior, who was her second husband. The famous Joe I 
never saw again, though hearing often of his preferments, 
performances, and him, till he died, not long since, writ- 
ing a new " Discovery of Junius," it was rumoured ; fit- 
enough task for such a man. Bessy Parkes (of the Rights 
of Women) is a daughter of his. There were Phipsons, 
too, ''Unitarian people," very good to me. A young 
fellow of them, still young though become a pin manu- 
facturer, had been at Erlangen University, and could float 
along in a light, airy, anecdotic fashion by a time. He 
re-emerged on me four or five years ago, living at Putney : 
head grown white from red, but heart still light ; introdu- 
cing a chemical son of his, whom I thought not unlikely to 
push himself in the world by that course. Kennedy of 
Cambridge, afterwards great as " master of Shrewsbury 
school," was polite to me, but unproductive. Others — 
but why should I speak of them at all ? Accidentally, 
one Sunday evening, I heard the famous Dr. Hall (of 
Leicester) preach ; a flabby, pufify, but massy, earnest, 
forcible-looking man, homme alors celebre ! Sermon ex- 
tempore ; text, " God who cannot lie." He proved be- 
yond shadow of doubt, in a really forcible but most super- 
fluous way, that God never lied (had no need to do it, 
etc.). " As good prove that God never fought a duel," 
snifled Badams, on my reporting at home. 



202 EDWARD IRVING. 

Jemmy Belcher was a smirking little dumpy Unitarian 
bookseller, in the Bull-ring, regarded as a kind of curiosity 
and favourite among these people, and had seen me. 
One showery day I took shelter in his shop ; picked up a 
new magazine, found in it a cleverish and completely 
hostile criticism of my " Wilhelm Meister," of my Goethe, 
and self, etc., read it faithfully to the end, and have never 
set eye on it since. On stepping out of my bad spirits 
did not feel much elevated by the dose just swallowed, 
but I thought with myself, " This man is perhaps right on 
some points; if so, let him be admonitory!" And he 
was so (on a Scotticism, or perhaps two) ; and I did 
reasonably soon (in not above a couple of hours), dismiss 
him to the devil, or to Jericho, as an ill-given, unservice- 
able kind of entity in my course through this w^orld. It 
was De Quincey, as I often enough heard afterwards 
from foolish-talking persons. '* What matter who, ye 
foolish-talking persons ? " would have been my sile;?^ 
answer, as it generally pretty much was. I recollect, too, 
how in Edinburgh a year or two after, poor De Quincey, 
whom I wished to know, was reported to tremble at the 
thought of such a thing ; and did fly pale as ashes, poor 
little soul, the first time we actually met. He was a pretty 
little creature, full of wire- drawn ingenuities, bankrupt 
enthusiasms, bankrupt pride, with the finest silver-toned 
low voice, and most elaborate gently-winding courtesies 
and ingenuities in conversation. *' What wouldn't one 
give to have him in a box, and take him out to talk ! " 
That was Her criticism of him, and it was right good. A 
bright, ready, and melodious talker, but in the end an 



EDWARD IRVING. 203 

inconclusive and long-winded. One of the smallest man 
figures I ever saw ; shaped like a pair of tongs, and hardly 
above five feet in all. When he sate, you would have 
taken him, by candlelight, for the beautifullest little child ; 
blue-eyed, sparkling face, had there not been a something, 
too, v.hich said " £ccozi—th\s child has been in hell." 
After leaving Edinburgh I never saw him. hardly ever 
heard of him. His fate, owing to opium etc., was hard 
and sore, poor fine-strung weak creature, launched so into 
the literar>' career of ambition and mother of dead dogs. 
That peculiar kind of *' meeting " with him was among the 
phenomena of my then Birmingham ["' Bromwich-ham," 
Brumagem," as you were forced to call it). 
Ir\'ing himself, once, or perhaps twice, came to us, in 
respect of a Scotch Chapel newly set on foot there, and 
rather in tottering condition. Preacher in it one Crosbie, 
whom I had seen once at Glasgow in Dr. Chalmers's, a 
silent guest along with me, whose chief characteristic was 
helpless dispiritment under dyspepsia, which had come 
upon him, hapless innocent laz>' soul. The people were 
ver>^ kind to him, but he was helpless, and I think soon 
after went away. What became of the Chapel since I 
didn't hear. The Rev. Mr. Martin of Kirkcaldy, with his 
reverend father, and perhaps a sister, passed through Bir- 
mingham, bound for London to christen some new child 
of Ir\'ing's ; and being received in a kind of gala by those 
Scotch Chapel people, caused me a noisy not pleasant 
day. Another day, positively painful though otherwise 
instructive, I had in the Dudley ** Black Country" (which 
I had once seen from the distance^, roving about among 



204 EDWARD IRVING. 

the coal and metal mines there, in company or neighbour- 
hood of Mr. Airy, now '' Astromomer Royal," whom I 
have nev^er seen since. Ourparty was but of four. Some 
opulent retired Dissenting Minister had decided on a hol- 
iday ovation to Airy, who had just issued from Cambridge 
as chief of Wranglers and mathematical wonder, and had 
come to Birmingham on visit to some footlicker whose 
people lived there. ^' I will show Airy our mine country," 
said the reverend old friend of enlightenment, " and Mr. 
G., Airy's footlicker, shall accompany ! " That was his 
happy thought; and Badams hearing it from him, had 
suggested me (not quite unknown to him) as a fourth 
figure. I was ill in health, but thought it right to go. 
We inspected black furnaces, descended into coal mines ; 
poked about industriously into nature's and art's sooty 
arcana all day (with a short recess for luncheon), and 
returned at night in the Reverend's postchaise, thoroughly 
wearied and disgusted, one of us at least. Nature's sooty 
arcana was welcome and even pleasant to me ; art's also, 
more or less. Thus in the belly of the deepest mine, 
climbing over a huge jingle of new-loosened coal, there 
met me on the very summit a pair of small cheerful human 
eyes (face there was none discernible at first, so totally 
black was it, and so dim were our candles), then a ditto 
ditto of lips, internally red ; which I perceived, with a 
comic interest, were begging beer from me ! Nor was 
Airy himself in the least an offence, or indeed sensibly a 
concern. A hardy little figure, of edacious energetic 
physiognomy, eyes hard, strong, not fine ; seemed three 
or four years younger than I, and to be in secret serenely, 



EDWARD IRVING. 20$ 

not insolently, enjoying his glory, which I made him 
right welcome to do on those terms. In fact he and I 
hardly spoke together twice or thrice, and had as good as 
no relation to each other. The old Reverend had taken 
possession of Airy, and was all day at his elbow. And 
to me, fatal allotment, had fallen the *' footlicker," one of 
the foolishest, most conceited, ever-babbling blockheads 
I can remember to have met. 

What a day of boring (not of the mine strata only !) 
I felt as if driven half crazy, and mark it to this hour with 
coal ! 

'But enough, and far more than enough, of my Bir- 
mingham reminiscences ! Irving himself had been with 
us. Badams was every few weeks up in London for a day 
or two. Mrs. Strachey, too, sometimes wrote to me. 
London was still, in a sense, my headquarters. Early in 
September (it must have been), I took kind leave of Ba- 
dams and his daily kind influences ; hoping, both of us, it 
might be only temporary leave ; and revisited London, at 
least passed through it, to Dover and the sea-coast, where 
Mrs. Strachey had contrived a fine sea party, to consist 
of herself, with appendages of the Irvings and of me, 
for a few bright weeks ! I remember a tiny bit of my 
journey, solitary on the coach- roof, betv/een Canterbury 
and Bridge. Nothing else whatever of person or of place 
from Birmingham to that, nor anything immediately on- 
wards from that ! The Irvings had a dim but snuggish 
house, rented in some street near the shore, and I was to 
lodge with them. Mrs. Strachey was in a brighter place 
near by ; detached new roWy called Liverpool Terrace at 



206 EDWARD IRVING. 

that time (now buried among streets, and hardly discerni- 
ble by me last autumn when I pilgrimed thither again 
after forty-two years). 

Mrs. Strachey had Kitty with her, and was soon ex- 
pecting her husband. Both households were in full 
action, or gradually getting into it, when I arrived. 

We walked, all of us together sometimes, at other 
times in threes or twos. We dined often at Mrs. Stra- 
chey 's ; read commonly in the evenings at Irving's, Irv- 
ing reader, in Phineas Fletcher's " Purple Island " for one 
thing ; over which Irving strove to be solemn, and Kitty 
and I rather not, throwing in now and then a little spice 
of laughter and quiz. I never saw the book again, nor in 
spite of some real worth it had; and of much half-real lau- 
dation, cared greatly to see it. Mrs. Strachey, I suspect, 
didn't find the sea party so idyllic as her forecast of it. 
In a fortnight or so Strachey came, and then there was a 
new and far livelier element of anti-humbug, z.v\.\\enmii, 
which could not improve matters. She determined on 
sending Strachey, Kitty, and me off on a visit to Paris for 
ten days, and having the Irvings all to herself. We went 
accordingly ; saw Paris, saw a bit of France — nothing like 
so common a feat as now ; and the memory of that is still 
almost complete, if it were a legitimate part of m}^ subject. 

The journey out, weather fine and novelty awaiting 
young curiosity at every step, was very pleasant. Mon- 
treuil, Noailles, Abbeville, Beauvais, interesting names, 
start into facts. Sterne's " Sentimental Journey " (espe- 
cially) is alive in one from the first stage onwards. At 
Nampont, on the dirty little street, you almost expect to 



EDWARD IRVING. 20/ 

see the dead ass lying ! Our second night was at Beau- 
vais ; glimpses of the old cathedral next morning went for 
nothing, was in fact nothing to me ; but the gUmpse I had 
had the night before, as we drove in this way, of the Cof- 
fee-house near by, and in it no company but one tall, 
sashed, epauletted, well-dressed officer striding dismally 
to and fro, was, and still is, impressive on me, as an almost, 
unrivalled image of human ennui. I sate usually outside, 
fair Kitty sometimes, and Strachey oftener, sitting by me 
on the hindward seat. Carriage I think was Kitty's own, 
and except her maid we had no servants. Postilion 
could not tell me where " Crecy " was, when we were in 
the neighbourhood. Country in itself, till near Paris, 
ugly, but all gilded with the light of young lively wonder. 
Little scrubby boys playing at ball on their scrubby patch 
of parish green ; how strange ! " Charite, madame, pour 
une pairore miserable^ qui, elle, en a bien besoin ! " sang 
the poor lame beggar girls at the carriage door. None of 
us spoke French well. Strachey grew even worse as we 
proceeded, and at length was quite an amusement to hear. 
At Paris he gave it up altogether, and would speak noth- 
ing but English ; which, aided by his vivid looks and 
gestures, he found in shops and the like to answer much 
better. *' Qiielqiie chose a boire, monsieur,'' said an ex- 
ceptional respectful postilion at the coach window before 
quitting. " Nong, vous avez drive devilish slow,'' an- 
swered Strachey readily, and in a positive half-quizzing 
tone. This was on the way home, followed by a storm of 
laughter on our part and an angry blush on the postil- 
ion's. 



208 EDWARD IRVING. 

From about Montmorency (with the shadow of Rous- 
seau), especially from St. Denis to Paris, the drive was 
quite beautiful, and full of interesting expectation. Mag- 
nificent broad highway, great old trees and then potherb 
gardens on each hand, all silent too in the brilliant Octo- 
ber afternoon ; hardly one vehicle or person met, till, on 
^mounting the shoulder of Montmarte, an iron gate, and 
douanier with his brief question before opening, and 
Paris, wholly and at once, lay at our feet. A huge bowl 
or deepish saucer of seven miles in diameter ; not a breath 
of smoke or dimness anywhere ; every roof, and dome, 
and spire, and chimney-top clearly visible, and the sky- 
light sparkling like diamonds. I have never, since or be- 
fore, seen so fine a view of a town. I think the fair Miss 
Kitty was sitting by me ; but the curious speckled straw 
hats and costumes and physiognomies of the Faubourg 
St. (fashionable, I forget it at this moment), are the 
memorablest circumstances to me. We alighted in the 
Rue de la Paix (clean and good hotel, not now a hotel) , 
admired our rooms, all covered with mirrors ; our grates, 
or grate backs, each with a cupidon cast on it ; and roved 
about the Boulevards in a happy humour till sunset or 
later. Decidedly later, in the still dusk, I remember sit- 
ting down in the Place Vendome, on the steps of the Col- 
umn, there to smoke a cigar. Hardly had I arranged my- 
self when a bustle of military was heard round me; clean, 
trim, handsome soldiers, blue and white, ranked them- 
selves in some quality, drummers and drums especially 
faultless, and after a shoulder arms or so, marched off in 
parties, drums fiercely and finely clangouring their ran- 



EDWARD IRVING. 209 

tan-plan. Setting the watch or watches of this human 
city, as I understood it. " Ha ! my tight Httle fellows in 
blue, you also have got drums then, none better; and all 
the world is of kin whether it all agree or not ! " was my 
childlike reflection as I silently looked on. 

Paris proved vastly entertaining to me. " Walking 
about the streets would of itself (as Gray the poet says) 
have amused me for weeks." I met two young Irishmen 
who had seen me once at Irving's, who were excellent 
ciceroni. They were on their way to the liberation of 
Greece, a totally wildgoose errand as then seemed to me, 
and as perhaps they themselves secretly guessed, but 
which entitled them to call on everybody for an *' auto- 
graph to our album," their main employment just now. 
They were clever enough young fellows, and soon came 
home again out of Greece. Considerably the taller and 
cleverer, black-haired and with a strong Irish accent, was 
called Tennent, whom I never saw again. The milky, 
smaller blondine figure, cousin to him, was Emerson, 
whom I met twenty-five years afterwards at Allan Cun- 
ningham's as Sir Emerson Tennent, late Governor of 
Ceylon, and complimented, simpleton that I was ! on the 
now finely brozvn colour of his hair / We have not met 
since. There was also of their acquaintances a pleasant 
Mr. Malcom, ex-lieutenant of the 42nd, native of the 
Orkney Islands, only son of a clergyman there, who 
as a young ardent lad had joined Wellington's army at 
the Siege of St. Sebastian, and got badly wounded (lame 
for life) at the battle of Thoulouse that same season. 
Peace coming, he was invalided on half-pay and now 



210 EDWARD IRVING. 

lived with his widowed mother in some clean upper floor 
in Edinburgh on frugal kind and pretty terms, hanging 
loosely by literature, for which he had some talent. We 
used to see him in Edinburgh with pleasure and favour, 
on setting up our own poor household there. He was an 
amiable, intelligent little fellow, of lively talk and specu- 
lation, always cheerful and with a traceable vein of 
humour and of pathos withal (there being much of sad- 
ness and affection hidden in him), all kept, as his natural 
voice was, in a fine low melodious tone. He wrote in 
annuals and the like vehicles really pretty verses, and 
was by degrees establishing something like a real reputa- 
tion, which might have risen higher and higher in that 
kind, but his wound still hung about him and he soon 
died, a year or two after our quitting Edinburgh ; which 
was the last we saw of him. 

' Poor little Malcolm ! he quietly loved his mother very 
much, his vanished father too, and had pieties and puri- 
ties very alien to the wild reckless ways of practice and 
of theory which the army had led him into. Most of his 
army habitudes) w^ith one private exception, I think, 
nearly all) he had successfully washed off from him. To 
the reprobate •'* theories " he had never been but heartily 
abhorrent. "No God, I tell you, and I will prove it to 
you on the spot," said some elder blackguard Lieutenant 
among a group of them in their tent one evening (a 
Hanoverian, if I recollect), *' on the spot — none." *' How 
then ? " exclaimed Ensign Malcolm, much shocked. The 
Hanoverian lifted his canteen, turned the bottom of it up. 
** Empty ; you see we have no more rum." Then hold- 



EDWARD IRVING. 211 

ing It aloft into the air, said In a tone of request, '' Fill us 
that ; " paused an instant, turned it bottom up empty 
still, and with a victorious glance at his companions, set 
it down again as a thing that spoke for itself. This was 
one of Malcolm's war experiences, of which he could 
pleasantly report a great many. These and the physical 
agonies and horrors witnessed and felt had given him a 
complete disgust for war. He could not walk far, always 
had a marked halt in walking, but was otherwise my 
pleasantest companion in Paris. 

Poor Louis Dix-Jmit had been " lying in state " as we 
passed through St. Denis ; Paris was all plastered with 
placards, '^ Le Rot est mort; vive le Rot/'' announcing 
from Chateaubriand a pamphlet of that title. I made no 
effort to see Chateaubriand, did not see his pamphlet 
either ; in the streets, galleries, cafes, I had enough and 
to spare. Washington Irving was said to be in Paris, a 
kind of lion at that time, whose books I somewhat es- 
teemed. One day the Emerson Tennent people bragged 
that they had engaged him to breakfast with us at a cer- 
tain cafe next morning. We all attended duly, Strachey 
among the rest, but no Washington came. '' Couldn't 
rightly come," said Malcolm to me in a judicious aside, 
as we cheerfully breakfasted with him. I never saw 
Washington at all, but still have a mild esteem of the 
good man. To the Louvre Gallery, alone or accom- 
panied, I went often ; got rather faintish good of the pic- 
tures there, but at least no harm, being mute and deaf on 
the subject. Sir Peter Laurie came to me one day ; took 
me to dinner, and plenty of hard-headed London talk. 



212 EDWARD IRVING. 

Another day, nobody with me and very few in the 
gallery at all, there suddenly came storming past, with 
dishevelled hair and large besoms in their hands, which 
they shoved out on any bit of paper or the like, a row 
of wild Savoyards, distractedly proclaiming " Le Roi ! " 
*'le Roi!" and almost oversetting people in their fierce 
speed to clear the way. Le Roi, Charles Dix in person, 
soon appeared accordingly, with three or four attendants, 
very ugly people, especially one of them (who had blear 
eyes and small bottle nose, never identifiable to my en- 
quiries since). Charles himself was a swart, slightish, 
insipid-looking man, but with much the air of a gentle- 
man, insipidly endeavoring to smile and be popular as he 
walked past ; sparse public indifferent to him, and silent 
nearly all. I had a real sympathy with the poor gentle- 
man, but could not bring up the least Vive le Roi in the 
circumstances. We understood he was going to look at 
a certain picture or painting now on the easel, in a room 
at the very end (entrance end) of the gallery which one 
had often enough seen, generally with profane mockery 
if with any feeling. Picture of, or belonging to, the birth 
or baptism of what they called the child of miracle (the 
assassinated Due de Berri's posthumous child, hodie 
Henri V. in partibus). Picture as yet distressingly ugly, 
mostly in a smear of dead colours, brown and even green, 
and with a kind of horror in the subject of it as well. 
How tragical are men once more ; how merciless withal 
to one another ! I had not the least real pity for Charles 
Dixs pious pilgriming to such an object ; the poor mother 
of it and her immense hopes and pains, I did not even 



EDWARD IRVING. 21 3 

think of then. This was all I ever saw of the legitimate 
Bourbon line, with which and its tragedies I was to have 
more concern within the next ten years. 

My reminiscences of Paris and its old aspects and 
localities were of visible use to me in writing of the Revo- 
lution by and by ; the rest could only be reckoned under 
the head of amusement, but had its vague profits withal, 
and still has. Old Legendre, the mathematician (whose 
Geometry I had translated in Edinburgh) was the only 
man of real note with whom I exchanged a few words ; 
a tall, bony, grey old man, who received me with dignity 
and kindness ; introduced me to his niece, a brisk little 
brown gentlewoman who kept house for him ; asked 
about my stay here, and finding I was just about to go, 
answered '' Diantre ! '' with an obliging air of regret. 
His rugged sagacious, sad and stoical old face is still 
dimly present with me. At a meeting of the Institiit I 
saw and well remember the figure of Trismegistus La- 
place ; the skirt of his long blue-silk dressing gown (such 
his costume, unique In the place, his age and his fame 
being also unique) even touched me as he passed on the 
session's rising. He was tall, thin, clean, serene, his face, 
perfectly smooth, as a healthy man of fifty's, bespoke In- 
telligence keen and ardent, rather than deep or great. In 
the eyes was a dreamy smile, with something of pathos 
in It and perhaps something of contempt. The session 
itself was profoundly stupid ; some lout of a provincial 
reading about Vers a soie, and big Vauquelln the chemist 
(noticed by me) fallen sound asleep. Strachey and I 
went one evening to call upon M. de Chezy, Professor of 



214 EDWARD IRVING. 

Persic, with whom he, or his brother and he, had com- 
municated while in India. We found him high aloft, but 
in a clean snug apartment, burly, hearty, glad enough to 
see us, only that Strachey would speak no French, and 
introduced himself with some shrill sounding sentence, 
the first word of which was clearly salaam. Chezy tried 
lamely for a pass or two what Persian he could muster, 
but hastened to get out of it, and to talk even to me, who 
owned to a little French, since Strachey would own to 
none. We had rather an amusing twenty minutes ; Chezy 
a glowing and very emphatic man ; '' ce hideux reptile de 
Langles'' was a phrase he had once used to Strachey's 
brother, of his chief French rival in the Persic field ! I 
heard Cuvier lecture one day ; a strong German kind of 
face, ditto intelligence as manifested in the lecture, which 
reminded me of one of old Dr. Gregory's in Edinburgh. 
I was at a sermon in Ste. Genevieve's; main audience 500 
or so of serving-maids ; preacher a dizened fool in hour- 
glass hat, who ran to and fro in his balcony or pulpit, 
and seemed much contented with himself ; heard another 
foolish preacher, Protestant, at the Oratoire {console-toi, 
France ! on the death of Louis Dix-huit). Looked 
silently into the Morgue one morning (infinitely better 
sermon that stern old greyhaired corpse lying there !) ; 
looked into the Hotel Dieu and its poor sick-beds once ; 
was much in the Pont-Neuf region {on tond les chiens et 
coupe les chats, et va en ville, etc., etc.); much in the 
Palais Royal and adjacencies ; and the night before leav- 
ing found I ought to visit one theatre, and by happy acci- 
dent came upon Talma playing there. A heavy, shortish 



EDWARD IRVING. 21 5 

numb-footed man, face like a warming-pan for size, and 
with a strange most ponderous yet delicate expression in 
the big dull-glowing black eyes and it. Incomparably 
the best actor I ever saw. Play was *'CEdipe" (Vol- 
taire's very first) ; place the Theatre Frangais. Talma 
died within about a year after. 

Of the journey home I can remember nothing but the 
French part, if any part of it were worth remembering. 
At Dover I must still have found the Irvings, and poor 
outskirts and insignificant fractions of solitary dialogues 
on the Kent shore (far inferior to our old Fife ones) have 
not yet entirely vanished ; e.g. strolling together on the 
beach one evening, we had repeatedly passed at some 
distance certain building operations, upon which by and 
by the bricklayers seemed to be getting into much viva- 
city, crowding round the last gable top ; in fact just about 
finishing their house then. Irving grasped my arm, said 
in a low tone of serious emotion, " See, they are going 
to bring out their topstone with shouting ! " I enquired 
of a poor man what it was; "You see, sir, they gets 
allowance," answered he ; that was all — a silent degluti- 
tion of some beer. Irving sank from his Scriptural alti- 
tudes ; I no doubt profanely laughing rather. There are 
other lingering films of this sort, but I can give them no 
date of before or after, and find nothing quite distinct till 
that of our posting up to London. I should say of the 
Stracheys posting, who took me as guest, the Irvings 
being now clearly gone. Canterbury and the (site of the) 
shrine of St. Thomas I did see, but it must have been 
before. We had a pleasant drive throughout, weather 



2l6 EDWARD IRVING. 

still sunny though cool, and about nine or ten P.M. of the 
second day I was set down at a little tavern on Shoot- 
er's Hill, where some London mail or diligence soon 
picked me up, and speedily landed me within reach of 
hospitable Pentonville, which gave me a welcome like it- 
self. There I must have stayed a few days, and not 
above a few. 

I was now again in London (probably about the 
middle of November) ; hither after much sad musing 
and moping I had decided on returning for another 
while. My ''Schiller" (of which I felt then the intrin- 
sic wretchedness or utter leanness and commonplace) was 
to be stitched together from the " London Magazine," 
and put forth with some trimmings and additions as a 
book ; lOO/. for it on publication in that shape " (Zero till 
then), that was the bargain made, and I had come to fulfil 
that, almost more uncertain than ever about all beyond. 
I soon got lodgings in Southampton Street, Ishngton, in 
Irving's vicinity, and did henceforth with my best dili- 
gence endeavour to fulfil that, at a far slower rate than I 
had expected. I frequently called on Irving (he never or 
not often on me, which I did not take amiss), and fre- 
quently saw him otherwise, but have already written 
down miscellaneously most of the remembrances that 
belong to this specific date of months. On the whole, 
I think now he felt a good deal unhappy, probably get- 
ting deeper and deeper sunk in manifold cares of his own, 
and that our communications had not the old copious- 
ness and flowing freedom ; nay, that even since I left for 
Birmingham there was perhaps a diminution. London 



EDWARD IRVING. 217 

** pulpit popularity," the smoke of that foul witches' caul- 
dron : there was never anything else to blame. I stuck 
rigorously to my work, to my Badams regimen, though 
it did but little for me, but I was sick of body and of 
mind, in endless dubiety, very desolate and miserable, 
and the case itself, since nobody could help, admonished 
me to silence. One day on the road down to Battle 
Bridge I remember recognising Irving's broad hat, atop 
amid the tide of passengers, and his little child sitting on 
his arm, wife probably near by. ** Why should I hurry 
up ? They are parted from me, the old days are no 
more," was my sad reflection in my sad humour. 

Another morning, what was wholesomer and better, 
happening to notice, as I stood looking out on the bit of 
green under my bedroom window, a trim and rather pretty 
hen actively paddling about and picking up what food 
might be discoverable. " See," I said to myself; " look, 
thou fool ! Here is a two-legged creature with scarcely 
half a thimbleful of poor brains ; thou call'st thyself a man 
with nobody knows how much brain, and reason dwelling 
in it ; and behold how the one life is regulated and how 
the other ! In God's name concentrate, collect whatever 
of reason thou hast, and direct it on the one thing need- 
ful. Irving, when we did get into intimate dialogue, was 
affectionate to me as ever, and had always to the end a 
great deal of sense and insight into things about him, but 
he could not much help me ; how could anybody but my- 
self? By degrees I was doing so, taking counsel of that 
symbolic Hen ! and settling a good few things. First, 
and most of all, that I would, renouncing ambitions, " fine 



2l8 EDWARD IRVING. 

openings," and the advice of all bystanders and friends, 
who didn't know ; go home to Annandale, were this work 
done ; provide myself a place where I could ride, follow 
regimen, and be free of noises (which were unendurable) 
till if possible I could recover a little health. Much fol- 
lowed out of that, all manner of adjustments gathering 
round it. As head of these latter I had offered to let my 
dearest be free of me, and of any virtual engagement she 
might think there was ; but she would not hear of it, not 
of that, the noble soul! but stood resolved to share my 
dark lot along with me, be it what it might. Alas, her 
love was never completely known to me, and how celes- 
tial it was, till I had lost her. '' O for five minutes more 
of her ! " I have often said, since April last, to tell her 
with what perfect love and admiration, as of the beauti- 
fullest of known human souls, I did intrinsically always 
regard her! But all minutes of the time are inexorably 
past ; be wise, all ye hving, and remember that timepasses 
and does not return. 

Apart from regular work upon " Schiller," I had a 
good deal of talking with people and social moving about 
which was not disagreeable. With Allan Cunningham I 
had made ready acquaintance ; a cheerful social man ; 
'* solid Dumfries mason with a surface polish given him," 
was one good judge's definition years afterwards ! He got 
at once i^ito Nithsdale when you talked with him, which 
though he was clever and satirical, I didn't very much 
enjoy. Allan had sense and shrewdness on all points, 
especially the practical ; but out of Nithsdale, except for 
his perennial good humour and quiet cautions (which 



EDWARD IRVING. 219 

might have been exemplary to me) was not instructive. 
I was at the christening of one of Allan's children over in 
Irving's, where there was a cheery evening, and the Cun- 
ninghams to sleep there ; one other of the guests, a 
pleasant enough Yorkshire youth, going with me to a 
spare room I could command. My commonest walk was 
fieldward, or down into the city (by many different old 
lanes and routes), more rarely by Portland Place (Fitzroy 
Square and Mrs. Strachey's probably first), to Piccadilly 
and the West End. One muddy evening there came to 
me, what enlightened all the mirk and mud, by the Pler- 
ren Grafen von Bentincks' servant, a short letter from 
Goethe in Weimar ! It was in answer to the copy of 
" Wilhelm Meister" which (doubtless with some reverent 
bit of note), I had despatched to him six months ago, 
without answer till now. He was kind though distant 
brief, apologised, by his great age {JioJien JaJu^eii) for the 
delay, till at length the Herren Grafen von Bentincks' pas- 
sage homewards had operated on him as a hint to do the 
needful, and likewise to procure for both parties, Herren 
Grafen and self, an agreeable acquaintance, of which latter 
naturally neither I nor the Herren Grafen ever heard more. 
Some twenty years afterwards a certain Lord George 
Bentinck, whom newspapers called the '' stable minded " 
from his previous ///r/" propensities, suddenly quitting all 
these and taking to statistics and Tory politics, became 
famous or noisy for a good few months, chiefly by intri- 
cate statistics and dull vehemence, so far as I could see, 
a stupid enough phenomenon for me, till he suddenly 
died, poor gentleman ! I then remembered that this was 



220 EDWARD IRVING. 

probably one of the Herren Grafen von Bentinck whose 
acquaintance I had missed as above. 

One day Irving took me with him on a curious httle 
errand he had. It was a bright summer morning ; must 
tlierefore have preceded the Birmingham and Dover 
period. His errand was this. A certain loquacious ex- 
tensive Glasgow publisher ^ was in London for several 
weeks on business, and often came to Irving, wasting (as 
I used to think) a good deal of his time in zealous dis- 
course about many vague things ; in particular about the 
villany of common publishers, how for example, on their 
*' half profits system," they would show the poor authors 
a printer's account pretending to be paid in full, printer's 
signature visibly appended, printer having really touched 
a sum less by 25 per cent., and sic de cceteris. All an ar- 
ranged juggle to cheat the poor author, and sadly con- 
vince him that his moiety was nearly or altogether Zero 
divided by two ! Irving could not believe it ; denied 
stoutly on behalf of his own printer, one Bensley, a noted 
man in his craft, and getting nothing but negatory smiles 
and kindly but inexorable contradiction, said he would go 
next morning and see. We walked along somewhere 
Holbornwards, found Bensley and wife in a bright, quiet, 
comfortable room, just finishing breakfast ; a fattish, solid, 
rational, and really amiable-looking pair of people, espe- 
cially the wife, who had a plump, cheerfully experienced 
matronly air. By both of whom we, i.e. Irving (for I had 
nothing to do but be silent) were warmly and honourably 

^ Dr. Chalmers's especially ; had been a schoolmaster; Collin perhaps his 



EDWARD IRVING. 221 

welcomed, and constrained at least to sit, since we would 
do nothing better. Irving with grave courtesy laid the 
case before Bensley, perhaps showed him his old signa- 
ture and account, and asked if that was or was not really 
the sum he had received. Bensley, with body and face 
writhed uneasily ; evidently loth to lie, but evidently 
obliged by the laws of trade to do it. "Yes, on the 
whole, that was the sum ! " upon which we directly went 
our ways ; both of us convinced, I believe, though only 
one of us said so. Irving had a high opinion of men, and 
was always mortified when he found it in any instance no 
lonsrer tenable. 

o 

Irving was sorrowfully occupied at this period, as I 
now perceive, in scanning and surveying the zurong side 
of that immense popularity, the outer or right side of 
which had been so splendid and had given rise to such 
sacred and glorious hopes. The crowd of people flocking 
round him continued in abated but still superabundant 
quantity and vivacity ; but it was not of the old high 
quality any more. The thought that the Christian reli- 
gion was again to dominate all minds, and the world to 
become an Eden by his thrice-blessed means, was fatally 
declaring itself to have been a dream ; and he would not 
consent to believe it such : never he ! That was the se- 
cret of his inward quasi-desperate resolutions ; out into 
the wild struggles and clutchings towards the unattainable, 
the unregainable, which were more and more conspicuous 
in the sequel. He was now, I gradually found, listening 
to certain interpreters of prophecy, thinking to cast his 
own great faculty into that hopeless quagmire along with 



222 EDWARD IRVING. 

them. These and the like resolutions, and the dark hu- 
mour which was the mother of them, had been on the 
growing hand during all this first London visit of mine, 
and were fast coming to outward development by the 
time I left for Scotland again. 

About the beginning of March 1825 I had at length, 
after fierce struggling and various disappointments from 
the delay of others, got my poor business winded up ; 
** Schiller " published, paid for, left to the natural neglect 
of mankind (which was perfect so far as I ever heard or 
much cared), and in humble, but condensed resolute and 
quiet humour was making my bits of packages, bidding 
my poor adieus, just in act to go. Everybody thought 
me headstrong and foolish ; Irving less so than others, 
though he too could have no understanding of my dys- 
peptic miseries, my intolerable sufferings from noises, etc., 
etc. He was always kind, and spoke hope if personal 
topics turned up. Perhaps it was the very day before 
my departure, at least it is the last I recollect of him, we 
were walking in the streets multifariously discoursing : a 
dim grey day, but dry and airy. At the corner of Cock- 
spur Street we paused for a moment, meeting Sir John 
Sinclair (*' Statistical Account of Scotland,'' etc.), whom 
I had never seen before and never saw again. A lean 
old man, tall but stooping, in tartan cloak, face very 
wrinkly, nose blue, physiognomy vague and with distinc- 
tion as one might have expected it to be. He spoke to 
Irving with benignant respect, whether to me at all I don't 
recollect. A little farther on in Parliament Street, some- 
where near the Admiralty (that now is, and perhaps then 



EDWARD IRVING. 223 

was), we ascended certain stairs, narrow newish wooden 
staircase the last of them, and came into a bare, clean, 
comfortless, official little room (fire gone out), where an 
elderly official little gentleman was seated within rails, 
busy in the red-tape line. This was the Honourable 
Something or other, great in Scripture prophecy ; in 
which he had started some sublime new idea, well worth 
prosecuting as Irving had assured me. Their mutual 
greetings were cordial and respectful ; and a lively dia- 
logue ensued on prophetic matters, especially on the sub- 
lime new idea ; I, strictly unparticipant, sitting silently 
apart till it was done. The Honourable Something had a 
look of perfect politeness, perfect silliness ; his face, 
heavily wrinkled, went smiling and shuttling about at a 
wonderful rate ; and in the smile there seemed to me to 
be lodged a frozen sorrow, as if bordering on craze. On 
coming out I asked Irving, perhaps too markedly, *' Do 
you really think that gentleman can throw any light to you 
on anything whatever?" To which he answered good- 
naturedly, but in a grave tone, " Yes, I do." Of which 
the fruits were seen before long. This is the last thing I 
can recollect of Irving in my London visit ; except per- 
haps some grey shadow of him giving me ''Farewell" 
with express " blessing." 

I paused some days at Birmingham ; got rich gifts 
sent after me by Mrs. Strachey ; beautiful desk, gold 
pencil, etc., which were soon Another s, ah me ! and are 
still here. I saw Manchester too, for the first time 
(strange bagman ways In the Palace Inn there) ; walked 
to Oldham ; savage-looking scene of Sunday morning ; 



224 EDWARD IRVING. 

old schoolfellow of mine, very stupid but very kind, being 
Curate there. Shot off too over the Yorkshire moors to 
Marsden, where another boy and college friend of mine 
was (George Johnson, since surgeon in Gloucester) ; and 
spent three dingy but impressive days in poking into 
those mute wildernesses and their rough habitudes and 
populations. At four o'clock, in my Palace Inn (Boots 
having forgotten me), awoke by good luck of myself, and 
saved my place on the coach roof. Remember the Black- 
burns, Boltons, and their smoke clouds, to right and left 
grimly black, and the grey March winds ; Lancashire was 
not all smoky then, but only smoky in parts. Remember 
the Bush Inn at Carlisle, and quiet luxurious shelter it 
yielded for the night, much different from now. (" Betty, 
a pan o' cooals ! " shouted the waiter, an Eskdale man by 
dialect, and in five minutes the trim Betty had done her 
feat, and your clean sleek bed was comfortably warm). 
At Ecclefechan, next day, within two miles or so of my 
father's, while the coach was changing horses, I noticed 
through the window my little sister Jean earnestly looking 
up for me ; she, with Jenny, the youngest of us all, 
was at school in the village, and had come out daily of 
late to inspect the coach in hope of me, always in vain 
till this day ; her bonny little blush and radiancy of look 
when I let down the window and suddenly disclosed my- 
self are still present to me. In four days' time I now 
(December 2, 1866, hope to see this brave Jean again 
(now ** Mrs. Aitken," from Dumfries, and a hardy, hearty 
wife and mother). Jenny, poor little thing, has had her 
crosses and difficulties, but has managed them well ; and 



EDWARD IRVING. 22 5 

now lives, contented enough and industrious as ever, with 
husband and three or two daughters, in Hamilton, Canada 
West, not far from which are my brother Alick too, and 
others dear to me. "Double, double, toil and trouble" 
— such, with result or without it, are our wanderings in 
this world." 

My poor little establishment at Hoddam Hill ' (close 
by the " Tower of Repentance," as if symbolically !) I do 
not mean to speak of here ; a neat compact little farm, 
rent lOO/., which my father had leased for me, on which 
was a prettyish-looking cottage for dwelling-house (had 
been the factor's place, who was retiring), and from the 
windows such a ''view" (fifty miles in radius, from be- 
yond Tyndale to beyond St. Bees, Solway Frith, and all 
the fells to Ingleborough inclusive), as Britain or the 
world could hardly have matched ! Here the ploughing, 
etc. etc. was already in progress (which I often rode 
across to see), and here at term day (May 26, 1825) I es- 
tablished myself, set up my books and bits of implements 
and Lares, and took to doing " German Romance" as my 
daily work, *' ten pages daily " my stint, which, barring 
some rare accidents, I faithfully accomplished. Brother 
Alick was my practical farmer ; ever-kind and beloved 
mother, with one of the little girls, was generally there ; 
brother John, too, oftenest, who had just taken his degree. 
These, with a little man and ditto maid, were our estab- 
lishment. It lasted only one year, owing, I believe, to 
indistinctness of bargain first of all, and then to arbitrary 

^ A house with small farm attached, three miles from Mainhill, and visible 
from the fields at the back of it. 
15 



226 EDWARD IRVING. 

high-handed temper of our landlord (used to a rather 
prostrate style of obedience, and not finding it here, but 
a polite appeal to fair-play instead). One whole summer 
and autumn were defaced by a great deal of paltry bother 
on that head, superadded to the others ; and at last, 
least of Mainhill, too, being nearly out, it was decided to 
quit said landlord's territories altogether, and so end his 
controversies with us. 

Next 26th of May we went all of us to Scotsbrig (a 
much better farm, which was now bidden for and got), 
and where, as turned out, I continued only a few months, 
wedded, and to Edinburgh in October following. Ah 
me ! what a retrospect now ! 

With all its manifold petty troubles, this year at Hod- 
dam Hill has a rustic beauty and dignity to me, and lies 
now like a not ignoble russet-coated idyll in my memory; 
one of the quietest, on the whole, and perhaps the most 
triumphantly important of my life. I lived very silent, 
diligent, had long solitary rides (on my wild Irish horse 
" Larry," good for the dietetic part), my meditatings, 
musings, and reflections were continual ; my thoughts 
went wandering (or travelHng) through eternity, through 
time, and through space, so far as poor I had scanned or 
known, and were now to my endless solacement coming 
back with tidings to me ! This year I found that I had 
conquered all my scepticisms, agonising doubtings, fear- 
ful wrestlings with the foul and vile and soul-murdering 
Mud-gods of my epoch ; had escaped as from a worse 
than Tartarus, with all its Phlegethons and Stygian quag- 
mires, and was emerging free in spirit into the eternal 



EDWARD IRVING. 22/ 

blue of ether, where, blessed be heaven ! I have for the 
spiritual part ever since lived, looking down upon the 
welterings of my poor fellow-creatures, in such multitudes 
and millions still stuck in that fatal element, and have had 
no concern whatever in their Puseyisms, ritualisms, meta- 
physical controversies and cobwebberies, and no feeling 
of my own except honest silent pity for the serious or re- 
ligious part of them, and occasional indignation, for the 
poor world's sake, at the frivolous secular and impious 
part, with their universal suffrages, their Nigger emanci- 
pations, sluggard and scoundrel Protection societies, and 
"unexampled prosperities" for the time being! What 
my pious joy and gratitude then was, let the pious soul 
figure. In a fine and veritable sense, I, poor, obscure, 
without outlook, almost without w^orldly hope, had be- 
come independent of the world. What was death itself, 
from the world, to what I had come through ? I under- 
stood well what the old Christian people meant by " con- 
version,'' by God's infinite mercy to them. I had, in 
effect, gained an immense victory, and for a number of 
years had, in spite of nerves and chagrins, a constant in- 
ward happiness that was quite royal and supreme, in 
which all temporal evil was transient and insignificant, 
and which essentially remains with me still, though far 
oftener eclipsed and lying deeper doivn than then. Once 
more, thank Heaven for its highest gift. I then felt, and 
still feel, endlessly indebted to Goethe in the business. 
He, in his fashion, I perceived, had travelled the steep 
rocky road before me, the first of the moderns. Bodily 
health itself seemed improving. Bodily health was all I 



228 EDWARD IRVING. 

had really lost in this grand spiritual battle now gained ; 
and that, too, I may have hoped would gradually return 
altogether, which it never did, and was far enough from 
doing ! Meanwhile my thoughts were very peaceable, full 
of pity and humanity as they had never been before. 
Nowhere can I recollect of myself such pious musings, com- 
munings silent and spontaneous with Fact and Nature, as 
in these poor Annandale locahties. The sound of the kirk- 
bell once or twice on Sunday mornings, from Hoddam kirk, 
about a mile off on the plain below me, was strangely 
touching, like the departing voice of eighteen hundred 
years. Frank Dickson at rare intervals called in passing. 
Nay, once for about ten days my dearest and beautifullest 
herself came across out of Nithsdale to ** pay my mother 
a visit," when she gained all hearts, and we mounted our 
swift little horses and careered about ! No wonder I call 
that year idyllic, in spite of its russet coat. My darling 
and I were at the Grange (Mrs. Johnston's), at Annan 
(Mrs. Dickson's), and we rode together to Dumfries, 
where her aunts and grandmother were, whom she was to 
pause with on this her road home to Templand.^ How 
beautiful, how sad and strange all that now looks ! Her 
beautiful little heart was evidently much cast down, right 
sorry to part, though we hoped it was but for some short 
while. I remember the heights of Mousewold, with 
Dumfries and the granite mountains lying in panorama 
seven or eight miles off to our left, and what she artlessly 
yet finely said to me there. Oh, my darling, not Andro- 
mache dressed in all the art of a Racine looks more high 

' House in Nithsdale where Miss Urleh's grandfather lived. 



EDWARD IRVING. 229 

and queenly to me, or Is more of a tragic poem than thou 
and thy noble pilgrimage beside me in this poor thorny 
muddy world ! 

I had next to no direct correspondence with Irving ; 
a little note or so on business, nothing more. Nor was 
Mrs. Montague much more instructive on that head, who 
wrote me high-sounding amiable things which I could not 
but respond to more or less, though dimly aware of their 
quality. Nor did the sincere and ardent Mrs. Strachey, 
who wrote seldomer,. almost ever touch upon Irving; but 
b}^ some occasional unmelodious clang in all the news- 
papers (twice over I think in this year), we could suffi- 
ciently and with little satisfaction construe his way of life. 
Twice over he had leaped the barrier, and given rise to 
criticism of the customary idle sort, loudish universally, 
and nowhere accurately just. Case first was of preaching 
to the London Missionary Society ('' Missionary " I will 
call it, though it might be " Bible " or another). On their 
grand anniversary these people had appointed to him the 
honour of addressing them, and were numerously assem- 
bled expecting some flourishes of eloquence and flatteries 
to their illustrious divinely-blessed Society, ingeniously 
done and especially with fit brevity ^ dinner itself waiting, 
I suppose, close in the rear. Irving emerged into his 
speaking place at the due moment, but instead of treat- 
ing men and office-bearers to a short comfortable dose of 
honey and butter, opened into strict sharp enquiries, 
Rhadamanthine expositions of duty and ideal, issuing per- 
haps in actual criticism and admonition, gall and vinegar 
instead of honey ; at any rate keeping the poor people 



230 EDWARD IRVING. 

locked up there for "above two hours" instead of one 
hour or less, with dinner hot at the end of it. This was 
much criticised; ''plainly wrong, and produced by love 
of singularity and too much pride in oneself," voted 
everybody. For, in fact, a man suddenly holding up the 
naked inexorable Ideal in face of the clothed, and in Eng- 
land generally plump, comfortable, and pot-bellied Real- 
ity, is doing an unexpected and a questionable thing ! 

The next escapade was still worse. At some pubHc 
meeting, of probably the same '' Missionary Society," 
Irving again held up his ideal, I think not without mur- 
murs from former sufferers by it, and ended by solemnly 
putting down, not his name to the subscription Hst, but 
an actual gold watch, which he said had just arrived to 
him from his beloved brother lately dead in India.^ That 
of the gold watch tabled had in reality a touch of rash 
ostentation, and was bitterly crowed over by the able 
editors for a time. On the whole one could gather too 
clearly that Irving's course was beset with pitfalls, barking 
dogs, and dangers and difficulties unwarned of, and that 
for one who took so little counsel with prudence he per- 
haps carried his head too high. I had a certain harsh 
kind of sorrow about poor Irving, and my loss of him 
(and his loss of me on such poor terms as these seemed to 

' This brother was John, the eldest of the three, an Indian army surgeon, 
whom I remember once meeting on a *' common stair " in Edinburgh, on re- 
turn I suppose from some call on a comrade higher up ; a taller man than 
even Edward, and with a blooming, placid, not very intelligent face, and no 
squint, whom I easily recognised by family likeness, but never saw again or 
before. 



EDWARD IRVING. 23 1 

be !) but I carelessly trusted in his strength against what- 
ever mistakes and impediments, and felt that for the pres- 
ent it was better to be absolved from corresponding with 
him. 

That same year, late in autumn, he was at Annan, 
only for a night and day, returning from some farther jour- 
ney, perhaps to Glasgow or Edinburgh; and had to go on 
again for London next day. I rode down from Hoddam 
Hill before nightfall ; found him sitting in the snug little 
parlour beside his father and mother, beautifully domestic. 
I think it was the last time I ever saw those good old peo- 
ple. We sate only a few minutes, my thoughts sadly 
contrasting the beautiful affectionate safety here, and the 
wild tempestuous hostilities and perils yonder. He left 
his blessing to each, by name, in a low soft voice. There 
was something almost tragical to me as he turned round 
(hitting his hat on the little door lintel), and next moment 
was on the dark street, followed only by me. We stept 
over to Robert Dickson's, his brother-in-law's, and sat 
there, still talking, for perhaps an hour. Probably his plan 
of journey was to catch the Glasgow-London mail at 
Gretna, and to walk thither, the night being dry and time 
at discretion. 

Walk I remember he did, and talk in the interim (three 
or at most four of us now), not in the least downhearted. 
Told us, probably in answer to some question of mine, 
that the projected *' London University " (now of Gower 
Street) seemed to be progressing towards fulfilment, and 
how at some meeting Poet Campbell, arguing loudly for 
a purely secular system, had, on sight of Irving entering, 



232 EDWARD IRVING. 

at once stopt short, and in the poHtest way he could, sate 
down, without another word on the subject. '* It will be 
unreligious, secretly anti-religious all the same," said 
Irving to us. Whether he reported of the projected 
Athenaeum Club (dear to Basil Montague, among others), 
I don't recollect ; probably not, as he or I had little in- 
terest in that. When the time had come for setting out, 
and we were all on foot, he called for his three little 
nieces, having their mother by him ; had them each suc- 
cessively set standing on a chair, laid his hand on the 
head first of one, with a " Mary Dickson, the Lord bless 
you ! " then of the next by name, and of the next, '* The 
Lord bless you ! " in a sad and solemn tone (with some- 
thing of elaborate noticeable in it, too), which was painful 
and dreary to me. A dreary visit altogether, though an 
unabatedly affectionate on both sides. In what a contrast, 
thought I, to the old sunshiny visits, when Glasgow was 
headquarters, and everybody was obscure, frank to his 
feelings, and safe ! Mrs. Dickson, I think, had tears in her 
eyes. Her, too, he doubtless blessed, but without hand 
on head. Dickson and the rest of us escorted him a little 
way ; would then take leave in the common form ; but 
even that latter circumstance I do not perfectly recall, 
only the fact of our escorting, and before the visit and 
after it all is. now fallen dark. 

Irving did not re-emerge for many months, and found 
me then in very greatly changed circumstances. His next 
visit was to 21s at Comley Bank,^ Edinburgh, not to 7ne 

^ Where Carlyle and his wife lived for the first eighteen months after 
their marriage. 



EDWARD IRVING. 233 

any longer ! It was probably in spring, 1827, a visit of 
only half an hour, more resembling a "call" from neigh- 
bour on neighbour. I think it was connected with 
Scripture prophecy work, in which he was now deep. 
At any rate, he was now preaching and communing on 
something or other to numbers of people in Edinburgh, 
and we had heard of him for perhaps a week before as 
shiningly busy in that way, when in some interval he 
made this little ri^n over to Comley Bank and us. He 
was very friendly, but had a look of trouble, of haste, and 
confused controversy and anxiety, sadly unlike his old 
good self. In dialect, too, and manner, things had not 
bettered themselves, but the contrary. He talked with an 
undeniable self-consciousness, and something which you 
could not but admit to be religious mannerism. Never 
quite recovered out of that, in spite of our, especially 
of her, eftbrts while he stayed. At parting he proposed 
"to pray" with us, and did, in standing posture, ignor- 
ing or conscientiously defying our pretty evident reluc- 
tance. "Farewell!" he said soon after; "I must go 
then and suffer persecution as my fathers have done." 
Much painful contradiction he evidently had from the 
world about him, but also much zealous favour ; and was 
going that same evening to a public dinner given in hon- 
our of him, as we and everybody knew. 

This was, I think, the nadir of my poor Irving, veiled 
and hooded in these miserable manifold crapes and for- 
mulas, so that his brave old self never once looked fairly 
through, which had not been nor was again quite the 
case in any other visit or interview. It made one drearily 



234 EDWARD IRVING. 

sad. '* Dreary," that was the word ; and we had to con- 
sider ourselves as not a httle divorced from him, and bid- 
den "shift for yourselves." 

We saw him once again in Scotland, at Craigenput- 
toch/ and had him for a night, or I almost think for two, 
on greatly improved terms. He was again on some kind 
of church business, but it seemed to be of cheerfuUer and 
wider scope than that of Scriptural prophecy last time. 
Glasgow was now his goal, with freque#it preaching as he 
went along, the regular clergy actively countenancing. I 
remember dining with him at our parish minister's, good 
Mr. Bryden's, with certain Reverends of the neighbour- 
hood (the Dow of *' Irongray " one of them, who after- 
wards went crazy on the *' Gift of Tongues " affair). I 
think it must have been from Bryden's that I brought him 
up to Craigenputtoch, where he was quite alone with us, 
and franker and happier than I had seen him for a long 
time. It was beautiful summer weather, pleasant to 
saunter in with old friends in the safe green solitudes, no 
sound audible but that of our own voices, and of the birds 
and woods. He talked to me of Henry Drummond as 
of a fine, a great, evangelical, yet courtly and indeed uni- 
versal gentleman, whom prophetic studies had brought to 
him, whom I was to knozv on my next coming to London, 
more joy to me! We had been discoursing of religion 
with mildly worded but entire frankness on my part as 
usual, and something I said had struck Irving as un- 
expectedly orthodox, who thereupon ejaculated, *' Well, I 

^ A lonely house on the moor, at the head of Nithsdale, ten miles from 
Dumfries, 



EDWARD IRVING. 235 

am right glad to hear that, and will not forget it when it 
may do you good with one whom I know of ; " with Henry 
Drummond namely, which had led him into that topic, 
perhaps not quite for the first time. There had been big 
** prophetic conferences," etc., held atDrummond's house 
(Albury, Surrey), who continued ever after an ardent 
Irvingite, and rose by degrees in the ''Tongues" busi- 
ness to be hierophant, and chief over Irving himself. He 
was far the richest of the sect, and alone belonged to 
the aristocratic circles, abundant in speculation as well as 
in money ; a sharp, elastic, haughty kind of man ; had 
considerable ardour, disorderly force of intellect and char- 
acter, and especially an insatiable love of shining and fig- 
uring. In a different element I had afterwards plentiful 
knowledge of Henry Drummond, and if I got no good 
of him got also no mischief, which might have been ex- 
tremely possible. 

We strolled pleasantly, in loose group, Irving the cen- 
tre of it, over the fields. I remember an excellent little 
portraiture of Methodism from him on a green knoll 
where we had loosely sat down. **Not a good religion, 
sir," said he, confidentially shaking his head in answer 
to my question ; ''far too little of spiritual conscience, 
far too much of temporal appetite ; goes hunting and 
watching after its own emotions, that is, mainly its own 
7ie7'V0tcs system j an essentially sensuous religion, depend- 
ing on the body, not on the soul!" "Fit only for a 
gross and vulgar-minded people," I perhaps added ; " a 
religion so called, and the essence of it principally coward- 
ice and hicnger, terror of pain and appetite for pleasure 



236 EDWARD IRVING. 

both carried to the infinite ; " to which he would sorrow- 
fully assent in a considerable degree. My brother John, 
lately come home from Germany, said to me next day, 
** That was a pretty little Schilderung (portraiture) he 
threw off for us, that of the Methodists, wasn't it ? " 

At Dunscore, in the evening, there was sermon and 
abundant rustic concourse, not in the kirk but round it in 
the kirkyard for convenience of room. I attended with 
most of our people {one of us not — busy she at home 
*' field marshalling," the noble little soul!) I remember 
nothing of sermon or subject, except that it went flow- 
ingly along like true discourse, direct from the inner res- 
ervoirs, and that everybody seemed to Hsten with respect- 
ful satisfaction. We rode pleasantly home in the dusk, 
and soon afterwards would retire, Irving having to " catch 
the Glasgow coach " early next day. Next day, correct 
to time, he and I were on horseback soon after breakfast, 
and rode leisurely along towards Auldgirth Bridge, some 
ten miles from us, where the coach was to pass. Irving's 
talk, or what of it I remember, turned chiefly, and in a 
cheerful tone, upon touring to the Continent, a beautiful 
six weeks of rest which he was to have in that form (and 
I to be taken with him as dragoman, were it nothing 
more !), which I did not at the time believe in, and which 
was far enough from ever coming. On nearing the goal 
he became a little anxious about his coach, but we were 
there in perfect time, '* still fifteen minutes to spare," and 
stept into the inn to wait over a real, or (on my part), 
theoretic glass of ale. Irving was still but midway in his 
glass when the coach, sooner than expected, was an- 



EDWARD IRVING. 23/ 

nounced. *'Does not change here, changes at Thorn- 
hill ! " so that there was not a moment to be lost. Irving 
sprang hastily to the coach roof (no other seat left), and 
was at once bowled away, waving me" his kind farewell, 
and vanishing among the woods. This was probably the 
last time I ever had Irving as my guest ; nay, as guest 
for nights or even a night it was probably the first time. 
In Scotland I never saw him again. Our next meeting 
was in London, autumn of the year 1 83 1. 

By that time there had been changes both with him 
and me. With him a sad-enough change, namely, depo- 
sitio7i from the Scottish Established Kirk, which he felt 
to be a sore blow, though to me it seemed but the Avhiff 
of a telinn imbelle for such a man. What the particulars 
of his heresy were I never knew, or have totally forgot- 
ten. Some doctrine he held about the human nature of 
the Divine Man ; that Christ's human nature was liable 
to sin like our own, and continually tempted thereto, 
which by His divine nobleness He kept continually per- 
fect and pure from sin. This doctrine, which as an im- 
partial bystander, I, from Irving's point of view and 
from my own, entirely assented to, Irving had by voice 
and pen been publishing, and I remember hearing vague- 
ly of its being much canvassed up and down, always with 
impatience and a boundless contempt, when I did hear 
of it. ** The gig of respectability again ! " I would say or 
think to myself. "They consider it more honourable to 
their Supreme of the world to have had his work done 
for him than to have done it himself. Flunkeys irre- 
deemable, carrying their plush into highest heaven ! " 



238 EDWARD IRVING. 

This I do remember, but whether this was the damning 
heresy, this or some other, I do not now know. Indeed, 
my own grief on the matter, and it had become a chronic 
dull and perennial grief, was that such a soul had any- 
thing to do with '' heresies " and mean puddles of that 
helpless sort, and was not rather working in his proper 
sphere, infinite spaces above all that ! Deposed he cer- 
tainly was, the fact is still recorded in my memory, and 
by a kind of accident I have the approximate daU of it 
too, Allan Cunningham having had a public dinner given 
him in Dumfries, at which I with great effort attended, 
and Allan's first talk to me on meeting having been about 
Irving's late troubles, and about my own soon coming to 
London with a MS. book in my pocket, with " Sartor 
Resartus " namely! The whole of which circumstances 
have naturally imprinted themselves on me, while so 
much else has faded out. 

The first genesis of ''Sartor" I remember well 
enough, and the very spot (at Templand) where the notion 
of astonishment at clotJies first struck me. The book had 
taken me in all some nine months, which are not present 
now, except confusedly and in mass, but that of being 
wearied with the fluctuations of review work, and of 
having decided on London again, with ''Sartor" as a 
book to be offered there, is still vivid to me ; vivid above 
all that dinner to Allan, whither I had gone not against 
my deliberate will, yet with a very great repugnance, 
knowing and hating the multiplex bother of it, and that I 
should have some kind of speech to make. "Speech" 
done, however {taliter qualiter, some short rough words 



EDWARD IRVING. 239 

upon Burns, which did well enough), the thing became 
not unpleasant, and I still well remember it all. Especi- 
ally how at length, probably near midnight, I rose to 
go, decisively resisting all invitations to ** sleep at Dum- 
fries ; " must and would drive home (knowing well who 
was waiting for me there !) and drove accordingly, with 
only one circumstance now worth mention. 

Dumfries streets, all silent, empty, were lying clear as 
day in the purest moonlight, a very beautiful and shiny 
midnight, when I stept down with some one or two for 
escort of honour, got into my poor old gig — brother 
Alick's gift or procurement to me — and with brief fare- 
well rattled briskly away. I had sixteen good miles 
ahead, fourteen of them parish road, narrower than high- 
way, but otherwise not to be complained of, and the 
night and the sleeping world seemed all my own for the 
little enterprise. A small black mare, nimble, loyal, 
wise,' this was all my team. Soon after leaving the high- 
way, or perhaps it was almost before, for I was well 
wrapt up, warm enough, contented to be out of my 
affair, wearied too with so much noise and sipping of 
wine, I too, like the world, had fallen sound asleep, must 
have sat in deep perfect sleep (probably with the reins 
hung over the whip and its case), for about ten miles ! 
There were ascents, descents, steep enough, dangerous 
fenceless parts, narrow bridges with little parapet (espe- 
cially one called " rowting," i.e. bellowing or roaring, 

' Whom I well remember. "As useful a beast," said my dear mother 
once, in fine expressive Scotch, as we drove together, "as ever one little 
skin covered." 



240 EDWARD IRVING. 

** Brig," spanning a grand loud cataract in quite an intri- 
cate way, for there was abrupt turn just at the end of it 
with rapid descent, and wrong road to be avoided) ; 
*' Rowting Brig," " Milltown Brig" (also with intricacy 
of wrong roads), not very long after which latter, in the 
bottom of Glenesland, roads a little rumbly there owing 
to recent inundation, I awoke, safe as if Jehu had been 
driving me, and within four miles of home ; considerably 
astonished, but nothing like so grateful as I now am, on 
looking back on the affair, and my little mare's perform- 
ance in it. Ah me ! in this creation rough and honest, 
though not made for our sake only, how many things, 
lifeless and living, living persons some of them, and tJiei}^ 
life beautiful as azure and heaven, beneficently help us 
forward while we journey together, and have not yet 
bidden sorrowful farewell ! My little darling sate waiting 
for me in the depths of the desert, and, better or worse, 
the Dumfries dinner was over. This must have been in 
July 1831. 

Thirteen months before there had fallen on me, and 
on us all, a very great, most tender, painful, and solemn 
grief, the death of my eldest sister Margaret, who after 
some struggles had quitted us in the flower of her youth, 
age about twenty-five. She was the charm of her old 
father's life, deeply respected as well as loved by her 
mother and all of us, by none more than me ; and was, in 
fact, in the simple, modest, comely, and rustic form as 
intelligent, quietly valiant, quietly wise and heroic a 
young woman as I have almost ever seen. Very dear 
and estimable to my Jeannie, too, who had zealously 



EDWARD IRVING. 241 

striven to help her, and now mourned for her along with 
me. ''The shortest night of 1830," that was her last in 
this world. The year before for many months she had 
suffered nameless miseries with a stoicism all her own. 
Doctors, unable to help, saw her with astonishment rally 
and apparently recover, " by her own force of character," 
said one of them. Never shall I forget that bright sum- 
mer evening (late summer 1829), when contemplatively 
lounging with my pipe outside the window, I heard un- 
expectedly the sound of horses* feet, and up our little 
" avenue," pacing under the trees overhung by the yellow 
sunlight, appeared my brother John and she unexpectedly 
from Scotsbrig, bright to look upon, cheery of face, and 
the welcomest interruption to our solitude. " Dear Mag, 
dear Mag, once more ! " Nay, John had brought me 
from Dumfries post-office a long letter from Goethe, one 
of the finest I ever had from him ; son's death perhaps 
mentioned in it ; all so white, so pure, externally and in- 
ternally, so high and heroic. This, too, seemed bright 
to me as the summer sunset in which I stood reading it. 
Seldom was a cheerfuller evening at Craigenputtoch. 
Margaret stayed perhaps a fortnight, quietly cheerful all 
the time, but was judged (by a very quick eye in such 
things), to be still far from well. She sickened again in 
March or April next, on some cold or accident, grew 
worse than ever, herself now falling nearly hopeless. 
'' Cannot stand a second bout like last year," she once 
whispered to one of her sisters. We had brought her to 
Dumfries in the hope of better medical treatment, which 
was utterly vain. Mother and sister Mary waited on her 



242 EDWARD IRVING. 

with trembling anxiety ; I often there. Few days before 
the end my Jeannie (in the dusk of such a day of gloomy 
hurlyburly to us all ! ) carried her on her knees in a 
sedan to some suburban new garden lodging we had got 
(but did not then tell me what the dying one had said to 
her). In fine, towards midnight, June 21-22, I alone still 
up, an express from Dumfries rapped on my window. 
** Grown worse ; you and your brother wanted yonder ! " 
AHck, and I were soon on horseback, rode diligently 
through the slumbering woods— ever memorable to me 
that night, and its phenomena of moon and sky ! — found 
all finished hours ago, only a weeping mother and sister 
left, with whom neither of us could help weeping. Poor 
Alick's face, when I met him at the door with such news 
(he had stayed behind me getting rid of the horses), the 
mute struggle, mute and vain, as of the rugged rock not 
to dissolve itself, is still visible to me. Why do I evoke 
these bitter sorrows and miseries which have mercifully 
long lain as if asleep ? I will not farther. That day, 
June 22, 1830, full of sacred sorrow and of paltry bother- 
ation of business — for we had, after some hours and a 
little consultation, sent Mary and my mother home— is to 
be counted among the painfuUest of my life ; and in the 
evening, having at last reached the silence of the woods, 
I remember fairly lifting up my voice and weeping aloud 
a long time. 

All this has little to do with Irving, little even with 
the journey I was now making towards him, except that 
in the tumultuous agitations of the latter it came all in 
poignant clearness and completeness into my mind again, 



EDWARD IRVING. 243 

and continued with me in the background or the fore- 
ground during most of the time I was in London. 
' From Whitehaven onwards to Liverpool, amid the 
noise and jostle of a crowd of high-dressed vulgar-looking 
people who joined us there, and with their " hot brandies," 
dice-boxes, etc., down below, and the blaring of brass 
bands, and idle babblers and worshippers of the nocturnal 
picturesque, made deck and cabin almost equally a de- 
lirium, — this, all this of fourteen months ago, in my poor 
head and heart, was the one thing awake, and the satur- 
nalia round it a kind of mad nightmare dream. At Lon- 
don too, perhaps a week or so after my arrival, somebody 
had given me a ticket to see Macready, and stepping out 
of the evening sun I found myself in Drury Lane Theatre, 
which was all darkened, carefully lamp-Ht, play just be- 
ginning or going to begin. Out of my gratis box — front 
box on the lower tier — I sat gazing into that painted 
scene and its mimings, but heard nothing, saw nothing; — 
her green grave and Ecclefechan silent little kirkyard far 
away, and how the evening sun at this same moment 
would be shining there^ generally that was the main thing 
I saw or thought of, and tragical enough that was, with- 
out any Macready ! Of Macready that time I remember 
nothing, and suppose I must have come soon away. 

Irving was now living in Judd Street, New Road, a 
bigger, much better old house than the former new one, 
and much handier for the new " Caledonian Chapel," 
which stood spacious and grand in Regent Square, and 
was quite dissevered from Hatton Garden and its concerns. 
I stept over to him on the evening of my arrival ; found 



244 EDWARD IRVING. 

him sitting quiet and alone, brotherly as ever in his recep- 
tion of me. Our talk was good and edifying. 

(Mr. Carlyle's MS. is here interrupted. Early in 
December 1866 he went to Mentone, where he remained 
for several months. December 27 he resumes in the new 
environment.)^ 

He was by this time deep in prophecy and other aber- 
rations, surrounded b)^ weak people, mostly echoes of 
himself and his inaudible notions ; but he was wiUing to 
hear me too on secularities, candid like a second self in 
judging of what one said in the way of opinion, and wise 
and even shrewd in regard to anything of business if you 
consulted him on that side. He objected clearly to my 
Reform Bill notions, found Democracy a thing forbidden, 
leading down to outer darkness ; I, a thing inevitable, and 
obliged to lead whithersoever it could. We had several 
colloquies on that subject, on which, though my own poor 
convictions are widened, not altered, I should now have 
more sympathy with his than was then the case. We also 
talked on religion and Christianity *' evidences," our no- 

' Ceased in London perhaps three weeks ago, mere hubbub and uncer- 
tainty intervening ; begins again at Mentone on the Riviera Occidentale, 
whither I have been pushed and pulled in the most unheard of way, Professor 
Tyndall, Lady Ashburton, friends, foes, all conspiring, a journey like "chaos 
come again," and an arrival and a continuance hitherto still liker ditto. 
Wakeful nights each, especially the one just gone ; in which strange circum- 
stances — bright sun shining, blue sea faintly munnering, orange groves glow- 
ing out of window, Mentone hidden, and Ventimiglia Cape in view, all earth 
a kind of Paradise, inhabitants a kind of quasi-Satan — I endeavour to pro- 
ceed the best I can. 



EDWARD IRVING. 245 

tions of course more divergent than ever. " It Is sacred, 
my friend, we can call it sacred ; such a Civitas Dei as 
was never built before, wholly the grandest series of work 
ever hitherto done by the human soul ; the highest God, 
doubt it not, assenting and inspiring all along." This I 
remember once saying plainly, which was not an encour- 
agement to prosecute the topic. We were in fact hope- 
lessly divided, to what tragical extent both of us might 
well feel ! But something still remained, and this we (he, 
at least, for I think in friendship he was the nobler of the 
two) were only the more anxious to retain and make good. 
I recollect breakfasting with him, a strange set of ignorant 
conceited fanatics forming the body of the party, and 
greatly spoiling it for me. Irving's own kindness was 
evidently in essence unabated ; how sorrowful, at once 
provoking and pathetic, that I or he could henceforth get 
so little good of it ! 

We were to have gone and seen Coleridge together, 
had fixed a day for that object ; but the day proved a 
long deluge, no stirring out possible, and we did not ap- 
point another. I never saw Coleridge more. He died 
the year after our final removal to London, a man much 
pitied and recognised by me ; never excessively esteemed 
in any respect, and latterly, on the intellectual or spiritual 
side, less and less. The father of Puseyism and of much 
vain phantasmal moonshine which still vexes this poor 
earth, as I have already described him. Irving and I did 
not, on the whole, see much of one another during this 
"Sartor Resartus " visit, our circumstances, our courses 
and employments were so altogether diverse. Early in 



246 EDWARD IRVING. 

the visit he walked me to Belgrave Square to dine with 
Henry Drummond ; beautiful promenade through the 
crowd and stir of Piccadilly, which was then somewhat of 
a novelty to me. Irving, I heard afterwards, was judged, 
from the broad hat, brown skin, and flowing black hair to 
be in all probability the one-string fiddler Paganini — a tall, 
lean, taciturn abstruse-looking figure — who was then, after 
his sort, astonishing the idle of mankind. Henry Drum- 
mond — house all in summer deshabille, carpets up, etc. — 
received. us with abundance of respect, and of aristocratic 
pococurantism withal (the latter perhaps rather in a con- 
scious condition) ; gave us plenty of talk, and received 
well what was given ; chiefly on the rotten social state of 
England, on the " Swing" outrages (half the year raising 
wheat and the other half burning it), which were then 
alarming everybody — all rather in epigrammatic exagger- 
ative style, and with "wisdom" sometimes sacrificed to 
'' wit." Gave us, in short, a pleasant enough dinner and 
evening, but left me, as Mazzini used to describe it, 
"cold." A man of elastic, pungent decisive nature, full 
of fine qualities and capabihties, but well nigh cracked by 
an enormous conceit of himself, which, both as pride and 
vanity (in strange partnership mutually agreeable), seemed 
to pervade every fibre of him, and render his Hfe a restless 
inconsistency. That was the feeling he left in me ; nor 
did it alter afterwards when I saw a great deal more of 
him, without sensible increase or diminution of the little 
love he at first inspired in me. Poor Henry ! he shot 
fiery arrows about too, but they told nowhere. I was 
never tempted to become more intimate with him, though 



EDWARD IRVING. 24/ 

he now and then seemed wiUing enough : ex nihilo 7iihil 
fit. He, without unkindness of intention, did my poor 
Irving a great deal of ill ; me never any, such my better 
luck. His last act was, about eight or nine years ago, to 
ask us both ' out to Albury on a mistaken day, when he 
himself was not there ! Happily my darling had at the 
eleventh hour decided not to go, so that the ugly confu- 
sion fell ail on me, and in a few months more Henry was 
himself dead, and no mistake possible again. Albury, 
the ancient Earl of Arundel's, the recent scene of prophet 
conferences etc. , I had seen for the first and most likely 
for the last time. My doiible-goer, T. Carlyle, "Advo- 
cate," who had for years been ** Angel " there, was lately 
dead ; and the numerous mistakes, wilful and involuntary, 
which he, from my fifteenth year onwards, had occasioned 
me, selling his pamphlets as mine, getting my letters as 
his, and vice versa ; nay, once or more with some am- 
bassador at Berlin dining \n my stead ; foolish vain fellow, 
who called me Antichrist withal in his serious moments ! 
were likewise at an end. All does end. 

My business lay with the bookseller or publishing 
world ; my chief intercourse was with the lighter literary 
figures : in part, too, with the political, many of whom I 
transiently saw at Jeffrey's (who was then Lord Advo- 
cate), and all of whom I might hear of through him. Not 
in either kind was my appetite very keen, nor did it in- 
crease by what it fed on. Rather a '* feast of shells," as 
perhaps I then defined it ; people of biggish names, but 
of substance mainly spilt and wanting. All men were 

* Carlyle and his wife. 



248 EDWARD IRVING. 

full of the Refonn Bill ; nothing else talked of, written 
of, the air loaded with it alone, which occasioned great 
obstruction in the publishing of my " Sartor," I was told. 
On that latter point I could say much, but will forbear. 
Few men ever more surprised me than did the great Al- 
bemarle Street Murray, who had published for Byron and 
all the great ones for many years, and to whom Jeffrey 
sent me recommended. Stupider man than the great 
Murray, in look, in speech, in conduct, in regard to this 
poor ''Sartor" question, I imagined I had seldom or 
never seen ! Afterwards it became apparent to me that 
partly he was sinking into the heaviness of old age, and 
partly, still more important, that in regard to this partic- 
ular "Sartor" question his position was an impossible 
one; position of a poor old man endeavouring to answer 
yes and no ! I had striven and pushed for some weeks 
with him and others on those impossible principles, till at 
length discovering how the matter stood, I with brevity 
demanded back my poor MS. from Murray, received it 
with some apologetic palaver (enclosing an opinion from 
his taster, which was subsequently printed in our edition), 
and much hope, etc. etc. ; locked it away into fixity 
of silence for the present (my Murray into ditto for 
ever), and decided to send for the dear one I had left 
behind me, and let her too see London, which I knew 
she would like, before we went farther. Ah me ! this 
sunny Riviera which we sometimes vaguely thought of, 
she does not see along with me, and my thoughts of 
her here are too sad for words. I will write no more 
to-day. Oh, my darling, my lost darling, may the great 



EDWARD IRVING. 249 

God be good to thee! Silence, though! and "hope" 
if I can ! 

My Jeannie came about the end of September. 
Brother John, by industry of hers and mine (hers chiefly), 
acting on an opportunity of Lord Advocate Jeffrey's, had 
got an appointment for Italy (travelling physician, by 
which he has since made abundance of money, and of 
work may be said to have translated Dante's " Inferno," 
were there nothing more !) We shifted from our uncom- 
fortable lodging' into a clean, quiet and modestly com- 
fortable one in Ampton Street (same St. Pancras region), 
and there, ourselves two — brother John being ojf to Italy 
— set up for the winter under tolerable omens. My dar- 
ling was, as ever, the guardian spirit of the establish- 
ment, and made all things bright and smooth. The 
daughter of the house, a fine young Cockney specimen, 
fell quite in love with her, served like a fairy. Was next 
year, long after we were gone, for coming to us at Craig- 
enputtoch to be " maid of all work " — an impossible sug- 
gestion ; and did, in effect, keep up an adoring kind of 
intercourse till the fatal day of April last, never changing 
at all in her poor tribute of love. A fine outpouring of 
her grief and admiring gratitude, written after that event,' 
was not thrown into the fire half-read, or unread, but is 
still lying in a drawer at Chelsea, or perhaps adjoined to 

' At Irving's youngest brother George's ; an incipient surgeon, amiable 
and clear superficially, who soon after died. 

2 Letter to me, signed " Eliza Snowden " ; Mtles was her maiden name. 
*'Snowden," once a clerk with her uncle, is now himself, for long years back, 
a prosperous upholsterer ; and the sylph like Eliza, grown fat enough of 
shape, is the mother of six or seven prosperous children to him. 



250 EDWARD IRVING. 

some of the things I was writing there, as a genuine 
human utterance, not without some sad value to me. My 
poor little woman had often indifferent health, which 
seemed rather to worsen than improve while we con- 
tinued ; but her spirit was indefatigable, ever cheery, full 
of grace, ingenuity, dexterity ; and she much enjoyed 
London, and the considerable miscellany of people that 
came about us — Charles Buller, John Mill, several pro- 
fessed " admirers" of mine (among whom was, and for 
aught I know still is, the mocking Hayvvard !) ; Jeffrey 
almost daily, as an admirer of hers ; not to mention Mrs. 
Montague and Co., certain Holcrofts (Badams married to 
one of them, a certain Captain Kenny married to the 
mother of them, at whose house I once saw Godwin, if 
that was anything), Allan Cunningham from time to time, 
and fluctuating foreigners, etc., etc. We had company 
rather in superabundance than otherwise, and a pair of 
the clearest eyes in the whole world were there to take 
note of them all, a judgment to compare and contrast 
them (as I afterwards found she had been doing, the dear 
soul !) with what was already all her own. Ah me ! Ah 
me ! 

Soon after New Year's Day a great sorrow came, un- 
expected news of my father's death. He had been in bed, 
as ill, only a few hours, when the last hour proved to be 
there, unexpectedly to all, except perhaps to himself; for 
ever since my sister Margaret's death he had been fast 
failing, though none of us took notice enough, such had 
been his perfection of health almost all through the sev- 
enty-three years he lived. I sat plunged in the depths of 



EDWARD IRVING. 25 1 

natural grief, the pale kingdoms of eternity laid bare to 
me, and all that was sad and grand and dark as death fill- 
ing my thoughts exclusively day after day. How beauti- 
ful She was to me, how kind and tender ! Till after the 
funeral my father's noble old face — one of the finest and 
strongest I have ever seen — was continually before my 
eyes. In these and the following days and nights I hastily 
wrote down some memorials of him,' which I have never 
since seen, but which still exist somewhere ; though, in- 
deed, they were not worth preserving, still less are after 
I have done with them. '' Posterity ! " that is what I 
never thought of appealing to. What possible use can 
there be in appealing t/iere, or in appealing anywhere, ex- 
cept by absolute silence to the High Court of Eternity, 
which can do no error, poor sickly transciencies that we 
are, coveting we know not what ! In the February en- 
suing I wrote " Johnson " (the ** Bozzy " part was pub- 
lished in *' Fraser" for March). A week or two before, 
we had made acquaintance, by Hunt's own goodness, with 
Leigh Hunt, and were much struck with him. Early in 
April we got back to Annandale and Craigenputtoch. Sad- 
ly present to my soul, most sadly, yet most beautifully, 
all that, even now ! 

In the course of the winter sad things had occurred in 
Irving' s history. His enthusiastic studies and preachings 
were passing into the practically *' miraculous," and to me 
the most doleful of all phenomena. The " Gift of 
Tongues " had fairly broken out among the crazed and 
weakliest of his wholly rather dim and weakly flock. I 

^ The first " Reminiscence " in this volume. 



252 EDWARD IRVING. 

was never at all In his church during this visit, being at 
once grieved and angered at the course he had fallen into ; 
but once or twice poor Eliza Miles came running home 
from some evening sermon there was, all in a tremor of 
tears over these same *' Tongues," and a riot from the dis- 
senting majority opposing them. " All a tumult yonder, 
oh me ! " This did not happen above twice or so ; Irving 
(never himself a " Tongue " performer) having taken some 
order with the thing, and I think discouraged and nearly 
suppressed it as unfit during church service. It was 
greatly talked of by some persons, with an enquiry, '' Do 
you believe in it? " ** Believe it? As much as I do in 
the high priest of Otaheite ! '' answered Lockhart once to 
Fraser, the enquiring bookseller, in my hearing. Sorrow 
and disgust were naturally my own feeling. " How are 
the mighty fallen ! my own high Irving come to this, -by 
paltry popularities and Cockney admirations puddling such 
a head ! " We ourselves saw less and less of Irving, but 
one night in one of our walks we did make a call, and ac- 
tually heard what they called the Tongues. It was in a 
neighbouring room, larger part of the drawing room be- 
like. Mrs. Irving had retired thither with the devotees. 
Irving for our sake had stayed, and was pacing about the 
floor, dandling his youngest child, and talking to us of 
this and that, probably about the Tongues withal, when 
there burst forth a shrieky hysterical ** Lah lall lall ! " 
(little or nothing else but /'s and ^'s continued for several 
minutes), to which Irving, with singular calmness, said 
only, "■ There, hear you, there are the Tongues ! " And 
we too, except by our looks, which probably were elo- 



EDWARD IRVING. 253 

quent, answered him nothing, but soon came away, full 
of distress, provocation, and a kind of shame. " Why- 
was there not a bucket of cold water to fling on that laJi- 
lalling hysterical madwoman ? " thought we, or said to 
one another. '' Oh, heaven, that it should come to this ! " 
I do not remember any call that we made there afterwards. 
Of course there was a farewell call ; but that too I recol- 
lect only obliquely by my Jeannie's distress and disgust at 
Mrs. Irving's hypocritical final kiss ; a *' kiss " of the un- 
truest, which really ought to have been spared. Seldom 
was seen a more tragical scene to us than this of Irving's 
London life was now becoming ! 

One other time we did see Irving, at our lodging, 
where he had called to take leave of us a day or two be- 
fore our quitting London. I know not whether the inter- 
view had been preconcerted between my darling and me 
for the sake of our common friend, but it was abundantly 
serious and affecting to us all, and none of the three, I 
believe, ever forgot it again. Preconcerting or not, I had 
privately determined that I must tell Irving plainly what 
I thought of his present course and posture. And I now 
did so, breaking in by the first opportunity, and leading 
the dialogue wholly into that channel, till with all the 
delicacy, but also with all the fidelity possible to me, I 
put him fully in possession of what my real opinion was. 
She, my noble Jeannie, said hardly anything, but her 
looks, and here and there a word, testified how deep her 
interest was, how complete her assent. I stated plainly 
to him that he must permit me a few words for relief of 
my conscience before leaving him for we know not what 



254 EDWARD IRVING. 

length of time, on a course which I could not but regard 
as full of danger to him. That the i^th of the Corinthians 
to which he always appealed, was surely too narrow a 
basis for so high a tower as he was building upon it, a 
high lean tower, or (\\i2.^\-mast , piece added to piece, till 
it soared far above all human science and experience, and 
flatly contradicted all that, founded solely on a little text 
oi writing \w "dsv ancient book! No sound judgment on 
such warranty could venture on such an enterprise. 
Authentic '' writings " of the Most High, were they 
found in old books only ? They were in the stars and on 
the rocks, and in the brain and heart of every mortal ; 
not dubious these to any person, as this I'^th of Corin- 
thians very greatly was. That it did not beseem him, 
Edward Irving, to be hanging on the rearward of man- 
kind, struggHng still to chain them to old notions not 
now well tenable, but to be foremost in the van, leading 
on by the light of the eternal stars across this hideous 
delirious wilderness where we all were, towards promised 
lands that lay ahead. Bethink you, my friend, I said, is 
not that your plainly commanded duty, more plain than 
any 13th of Corinthians can be. I bid you pause and 
consider ; that verily is my solemn advice to you ! I 
added that, as he knew well, it was in the name of old 
friendship I was saying all this. That I did not expect 
he would at' once, or soon, renounce his fixed views, con- 
nections, and methods for any words of mine ; but per- 
haps at some future time of crisis and questioning dubiety 
in his own mind he might remember the words of a well- 
affected soulj and they might then be a help to him. 



EDWARD IRVING. 255 

During all this, which perhaps lasted about twenty 
minutes, Irving sat opposite to me, within a few feet ; my 
wife to his right hand and to my left, silent and sad-look- 
ing, in the middle of the floor, Irving, with head down- 
cast, face indicating great pain, but without the slightest 
word or sound from him till I had altogether ended. . He 
then began with the mildest low tone, and face full of 
kindness and composed distress — " dear friend," and en- 
deavoured to make his apology and defence, which did 
not last long or do anything to convince me, but was in a 
style of modesty and friendly magnanimity which no mor- 
tal could surpass, and which remains to me at this moment 
dear and memorable and worthy of all honour. Which 
done, he went silently his way, no doubt with kindest 
farewell to us, and I remember nothing more. Possibly 
we had already made farewell call in Judd Street the day 
before, and found hivi not there. 

This was, in a rqanner, the last visit I ever made to 
Irving, the last time either of tis ever freely saw him, or 
spoke with him at any length. We had to go our way, 
he his ; and his soon proved to be precipitous, full of 
chasms and plunges, which rapidly led him to the close. 
Our journey homewards — I have spoken of it elsewhere, 
and of the dear reminiscences it leaves, ever sad, but also 
ever blessed to me now. We were far away from Irving 
in our solitary moors, stayed there still above two years 
(one of our winters in Edinburgh), and heard of Irving 
and his catastrophes only from a distance. He had come 
to Annan and been expelled from the Scottish Kirk. 
That scene I remember reading in some newspaper with 



256 EDWARD IRVING. 

lively conception and emotion. A poor aggregate of 
Reverend Sticks in black gown, sitting in Presbytery, to 
pass formal condemnation on a man and a cause which 
might have been tried in Patmos under presidency of St. 
John without the right truth of it being got at ! I knew 
the '' Moderator" (one Roddick, since gone mad), for one 
of the stupidest and barrenest of living mortals ; also the 
little phantasm of a creature — Sloane his name — who went 
niddy-noddying with his head, and was infinitely conceited 
and phantasmal, by whom Irving was rebuked with the 
"Remember where you are, sir ! " and got answer, *' I 
have not forgotten where I am ; it is the church where I 
was baptised, where I was consecrated to preach Christ, 
where the bones of my dear ones lie buried." Condem- 
nation under any circumstances had to follow ; '' le droit 
de me damner te reste toiijours ! " as poor Danton said in 
a far other case. 

The feeling of the population was, too, strong and 
general for Irving. Reverends Sloane and Roddick were 
not without their apprehensions of some tumult perhaps, 
had not the people been so reverent of the place they 
were in. Irving sent us no word of himself, made no ap- 
peal to any, friend or foe, unless his preaching to the peo- 
ple up and down for some days, partly perhaps in the 
way of defence, though mostly on general Gospel subjects, 
could be taken as such. He was followed by great 
crowds who eagerly heard him. My brother Jamie, who 
had been at several of those open-air preachings in differ- 
ent parts of the Annan neighbourhood, and who much 
admired and pitied the great Irving, gave me the last 



EDWARD IRVING. 25/ 

notice I ever had of that tragic matter, " Irv^ing's vocal 
appellatio ad poptiliini,'' when Presbytery had condemned 
him. This time the gathering was at Ecciefechan, proba- 
bly the final one of all, and the last time he ever preached 
to Annandale men. The assemblage was large and ear- 
nest, gathered in the Middlebie road, a little way off the 
main street and highway. The preacher stood on some 
table or chair, which was fixed against the trunk of a 
huge, high, strong and many-branched elm tree, well 
known to me and to everyone that passes that way. The 
weaflier was of proper February quality, grimly fierce, 
with windy snow showers flying. Irving had a woollen 
comforter about his neck, skirts of comforter, hair, and 
cloak tossing in the storms ; eloquent voice well audible 
under the groaning of the boughs and piping of the wind. 
Jamie was on business in the village and had paused 
awhile, much moved by what he saw and heard. It was 
our last of Irving in his native Annandale. Mrs. Oli- 
phant, I think, relates that on getting back to London he 
was put under a kind of arrest by certain Angels or au- 
thorities of his New " Irvingite " Church (just established 
in Newman Street, Oxford Street), for disobeying regula- 
tions— ^perhaps in regard to those volunteer preachings in 
Annandale — and sat with great patience in some peniten- 
tial place among them, dumb for about a week, till he had 
expiated that sin. Irving was now become wholly tragical 
to us, and the least painful we could expect in regard to 
him was what mainly happened, that we heard no news 
from that side at all. His health we vaguely understood 
was becoming uncertain, news naturally worse than none, 
17 



258 EDWARD IRVING. 

had we much beUeved it ; which, knowing his old hercu- 
lean strength, I suppose we did not. 

In 1834 came our own removal to London, concerning 
which are heavy fields of memory, laborious, beautiful, 
sad and sacred (oh, my darling lost one !) were this the 
place for them, which it is not Our winter in Edinburgh, 
our haggles and distresses (badness of servants mainly), 
our bits of diligences, strenuous and sometimes happy, 
brought in fine the clear resolution that we ought to go. 
I had been in correspondence with London — with John 
Mill, Leigh Hunt, Mrs. Austin, etc. — ever since our pres- 
ence there. " Let us burn our ships," said my noble one, 
and " get on march ! " I went as precursor early in May, 
ignorantly thinking this was, as in Scotland, the general 
and sole term for getting houses in London, and that after 
May 26 there would be none but leavings ! We were not 
very practically advised, I should think, though there were 
counsellors many. However, I roved hastily about seek- 
ing houses for the next three weeks, while my darling was 
still busier at home, getting all things packed and put 
under way. 

What endless toils for her, undertaken with what cour- 
age, skill, and cheery heroism ! By the time of her arri- 
val I had been far and wide round London, seeking 
houses. Had found out that the western suburb was in 
important respects the fittest, and had seen nothing I 
thought so eligible there as a certain one of three cheap 
houses ; which one she on survey agreed to be the best, 
and which is in fact No. 5 Great Cheyne Row, where the 
rest of our life was to be passed together. Why do I 



EDWARD IRVING. 259 

write all this ! It is too sad to me to think of it, broken 
down and solitary as I am, and the lamp of my life, which 
" covered everything with gold " as it were, gone out, 
gone out ! 

It was on one of those expeditions, a week or more 
after my arrival, expedition to take survey of the pro- 
posed No. 5, in company with Mrs. Austin, whom I had 
taken up in Bayswater where she lived, and with whom, 
attended also by Mrs. Jamieson, not known to me before, 
but found by accident on a call there, we were proceed- 
ing towards Chelsea in the middle of a bright May day, 
when I noticed well down in Kensington Gardens a dark 
male figure sitting between two white female ones under 
a tree ; male figure, which abruptly rose and stalked to- 
wards me, whom, seeing it was Irving, I disengaged my- 
self and stept out to meet. It was indeed Irving, but how 
changed in the two years and two months since I had last 
seen him ! In look he was almost friendlier than ever ; 
but he had suddenly become an old man. His head, 
which I had left raven-black, was grown grey, on the 
temples almost snow-white. The face was hollow, wrink- 
ly, collapsed ; the figure, still perfectly erect, seemed to 
have lost all its elasticity and strength. We walked some 
space slowly together, my heart smitten with various 
emotions ; my speech, however, striving to be cheery 
and hopeful. He was very kind and loving. It seemed 
to be a kind of tender grief and regret that my Jeannie 
and I were taking so important a step, and he not called 
at all to assist, rendered unable to assist. Certainly in 
all England there was no heart, and in all Scotland only 



260 EDWARD IRVING. 

two or three, that wished us half as well. He admitted 
his weak health, but treated it as temporary ; it seemed 
of small account to him. Friends and doctors had ad- 
vised him to shift to Bayswater for better air, had got him 
a lodging there, a stout horse to ride. Summer they ex- 
pected would soon set him up again. His tone was not 
despondent, but it was low, pensive, full of silent sorrow. 
Once, perhaps twice, I got a small bit of Annandale 
laughter from him, strangely genuine, though so lamed 
and overclouded. This was to me the most affecting 
thing of all, and still is when I recall it. He gave me his 
address in Bayswater, his house as near as might be, and 
I engaged to try and find him there ; I, him, which 
seemed the likelier method in our widely diverse ele- 
ments, both of them so full of bustle, interruption, and 
uncertainty. And so adieu, my friend, adieu ! Neither 
of us had spoken with the women of the other, and each 
of us -was gone his several road again, mine not specially 
remembered farther. 

It seems to me I never found Irving in his Bayswa- 
ter lodging. I distinctly recollect seeing him one dusty 
evening about eight at the door there, mount his horse, 
a stout fine bay animal, of the kind called cob, and set out 
towards Newman Street, whither he rode perhaps twice 
or thrice a day for church services there were ; but this 
and his friendly regret at being obliged to go is all I can 
recall of interview farther. Neither at the Bayswater 
lodging nor at his own house in Newman Street when he 
returned thither, could I for many weeks to come ever 
find him " at home." In Chelsea, we poor pair of immi- 



EDWARD IRVING. 26l 

grants had, of course, much of our own to do, and right 
courageously we marched together, my own brave dar- 
ling (what a store of humble, but high and sacred memo- 
ries to me !) victoriously carrying the flag. But at length 
it struck me there was something questionable in these 
perpetual " not-at-home's " of Irving, and that perhaps 
his poor, jealous, anxious, and much-bewildered wife, 
had her hand in the phenomenon. As proved to be the 
fact accordingly. I applied to William Hamilton (excel- 
lent City Scotsman, married, not over well I doubt, to a 
sister of Mrs. Irving), with a brief statement of the case, 
and had immediate remedy ; an appointment to dinner at 
Newman Street on a given day, which I failed not to ob- 
serve. None but Irving and his wife, besides myself, 
were there. The dinner (from a good joint of roast beef, 
in a dim but quite comfortable kind of room), was among 
the pleasantest of dinners to me, Madam herself wearing 
nothing but smiles, and soon leaving us together to a fair 
hour or two of free talk. I think the main topic must 
have been my own outlooks and affairs, my project of 
writing on the French Rcvohition, which Irving w^armly 
approved of (either then or some other time). Of his 
church matters we never spoke. I went away gratified, 
and for my own share glad, had not the outlooks on his 
side been so dubious and ominous. He was evidently 
growing weaker, not stronger, wearing himself down, as 
to me seemed too clear, by spiritual agitations, which 
would kill him unless checked and ended. Could he but 
be got to Switzerland, to Italy, I thought, to some pleas- 
ant country of which the language was unknown to him, 



262 EDWARD IRVING. 

where he would be forced to silence, the one salutary- 
medicine for him in body and in soul ! I often thought 
of this, but he had now no brother, no father, on whom I 
could practically urge it, as I would with my whole 
strength have done, feeling that his hfe now lay on it. I 
had to hear of his growing weaker and weaker, while 
there was nothing w^hatever that I could do. 

With himself I do not recollect that there was any- 
thing more of interview since that dinner in Newman 
Street, or that I saw him again in the world, except once 
only, to be soon noticed. Latish in the autumn some of 
the Kirkcaldy Martins had come. I remem.ber speaking 
to his father-in-law at Hamilton's in Cheapside one even- 
ing and very earnestly on the topic that interested us 
both. But in Martin, too, there was nothing of help, 
"Grows weaker and weaker," said he, '* and no doctor 
can find the least disease in him ; so weak now he cannot 
lift his little baby to his neck ! " In my desperate anxiety 
at this time I remember writing a letter on my Switzer- 
land or Italy scheme to Henry Drummond, whom I yet 
knew nothing more of, but considered to be probably a 
man of sense and practical insight ; letter stating briefly 
my sad and clear belief, that unless carried into some 
element of perfect sile?ice, poor Irving would soon die ; 
letter which lay some days on the mantelpiece at Chelsea, 
under some misgivings about sending it, and was then 
thrown into the fire. We heard before long that it was 
decided he should journey slowly into Wales, paying 
visits — perhaps into Scotland, which seemed the next best 
to what I would have proposed, and was of some hope to 



EDWARD IRVING. 26^ 

US. And late one afternoon, soon after, we had a short 
fiirewell visit from him ; his first visit to Cheyne Row and 
his last ; the last we two ever saw of him in this world. 
It was towards sunset, had there been any sun, that damp 
dim October day. He came ambling gently on his bay 
horse, sate some fifteen or twenty minutes, and went 
away while it was still daylight. It was in the ground- 
floor room, where I still write (thanks to her last service 
to me, shifting me thither again, the darling ever-helpful 
one !) Whether she was sitting with me on his entrance 
I don't recollect, but I well do his fine chivalrous de- 
meanour to /ler, and how he complimented her, as he 
well might, on the pretty little room she had made for her 
husband and self, and running his eye over her dainty 
bits of arrangements, ornamentations, all so frugal, simple, 
full of grace, propriety, and ingenuity as they ever were, 
said, smiling, ** You are like an Eve, and make a little 
Paradise wherever you are ! " His manner was sincere, 
affectionate, yet with a great suppressed sadness in it, and 
as if with a feeling that he must not linger. It was per- 
haps on this occasion that he expressed to me his satis- 
faction at my having taken to *' writing history " (" French 
Revolution " now begun, I suppose) ; study of history, 
he seemed to intimate, was the study of things real 
practical and actual, and would bring me closer upon all 
reality whatever. With a fine simplicity of lovingness he 
bade us farewell. I followed him to the door, held his 
bridle (doubtless) while he mounted, no groom being 
ever with him on such occasions, stood on the steps as 
he quietly walked or ambled up Cheyne Row, quietly 



264 EDWARD IRVING. 

turned the corner (at Wright's door, or the Rector's 
back garde7i door), into Cook's grounds, and had van- 
ished from my eyes for evermore. In this world neither 
of us ever saw him again. He was off northward in a 
day or two, died at Glasgow in December following, 
age only forty-three, and except weakness no disease 
traceable. 

Mrs. Oliphant's narrative is nowhere so true and 
touching to me as in that last portion, where it is drawn 
almost wholly from his own letters to his wife. All there 
is true to the life, and recognisable to me as perfect 
portraiture ; what I cannot quite say of any other por- 
tion of the book. All Mrs. Oliphant's dehneation shows 
excellent diligence, loyalty, desire to be faithful, and in- 
deed is full of beautiful sympathy and ingenuity; but 
nowhere else are the features of Irving or of his environ- 
ment and life recognisably hit, and the pretty picture, to 
one who knew his looks throughout. Is more or less 
XQv^2in\\c pictorial, and **not hke " till w^e arrive here, 
at the grand close of all, which to me was of almost 
Apocalyptic Impresslveness when I first read it some 
years ago. What a falhng of the curtain ! upon what a 
drama ! Rustic Annandale begins it, with Its homely 
honesties, rough vernacularitles, safe, innocently kind, 
ruggedly mother-like, cheery, wholesome, like its airy 
hills and clear-rushing streams ; prurient corrupted Lon- 
don Is the middle part, with its volcanic stupidities and 
bottomless confusions ; and In the end is terrible, mys- 
terious, godlike and awful ; what Patmos could be more 
so ? It is as if the vials of Heaven's wrath were pouring 



EDWARD IRVING. 265 

down upon a man, yet not wrath alone, for his heart was 
filled with trust in Heaven's goodness withal. It must be 
said Irving nobly expiates whatever errors he has fallen 
into. Like an antique evangelist he walks his stony 
course, the fixed thought of his heart at all times, 
" Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him ; " and 
these final deluges of sorrow are but washing the faithful 
soul of him clear. 

He sent from Glasgow a curious letter to his " Gift 
of Tongues " congregation ; full of questionings, dubieties 
upon the Tongues, and such points, full of wanderings in 
deep waters, with one light fixed on high : " Humble 
ourselves before God, and he will show us ; " letter indi- 
cating a sincerity as of very death, which these New 
Church people (Henry Drummond and Co.) first printed 
for useful private circulation, and then afterwards zeal- 
ously suppressed and destroyed, till almost everybody 
but myself had forgotten the existence of it. Luckily, 
about two years ago I still raked out a copy of it from 
"■ Rev. Gavin Carlile," ^ by whom I am glad to know it 
has been printed and made prominent, as a document 
honourable and due to such a memory. Less men- 
dacious soul of a man than my noble Irving's there could 
not well be. 

It was but a little while before this that he had said to 
Drummond, what was mentioned above, "I ought to have 
seen more of T. Carlyle, and heard him more clearly than 

' Nephew of Irving. Now editing Irving's Select Works, or some such 
title. 



266 EDWARD IRVING. 

I have done." And there is one other thing which dates 
several years before, which I always esteem highly hon- 
ourable to Irving's memory, and which I will note here as 
my last item, since it was forgotten at its right date. 
Right date is that of '' German Romance," early 1826. 
The report is from my brother John, to whom Irving spoke 
on the subject, which with me he had always rather 
avoided. Irving did not much know Goethe ; had gener- 
ally a dislike to him as to a kind of heathen ungodly per- 
son and idle singer, who had considerably seduced vie 
from the right path, as one sin. He read " Wilhelm 
Meister's Travels " nevertheless, and he said to John one 
day, '^ Very curious ! in this German poet there are some 
pages about Christ and the Christian religion, which as I 
study and re-study them have more sense about that 
matter than I have found in all the theologians I have ever 
read ! " Was not this a noble thing for such a man to feel 
and say ? I have a hundred times recommended that 
passage in " Wilhelm Meister " to enquiring and devout 
souls, but I think never elsewhere met with one who so 
thoroughly recognised it. One of my last letters, flung 
into the fire just before leaving London, was from an Ox- 
ford self-styled " religious enquirer," who asks me if in 
those pages of " Meister " there is not a wonderfully dis- 
tinct foreshadow of Comte and Positivism / Phoebus 
Apollo, god of the sun, foreshadowing the miserablest 
phantasmal algebraic ghost I have yet met with among the 
ranks of the living ! 

I have now ended, and am sorry to end, what I had to 



EDWARD IRVING. 267 

say of Irving. It is like bidding him farewell for a second 
and the last time. He waits in the eternities. Another, 
his brightest scholar, has left me and gone thither. God 
be about us all. Amen. Amen. 

Finished at Mentone, January 2, 1867, looking towards 
the eastward hills, bathed in sunshine, under a brisk west 
wind ; two P.M. 

T. C. 



LORD JEFFREY. 



LORD JEFFREY 

OF FRANCIS JEFFREY, HON. LORD JEFFREY, THE LAW- 
YER AND REVIEWER. 

Mentone : January 3, 1867. 

Few sights have been more impressive to me than the 
sudden one I had of the " Outer House " in Parliament 
Square, Edinburgh, on the evening of November9, 1809, 
some hours after my arrival in that city for the first time. 
We had walked some twenty miles that day, the third 
day of our journey from Ecclefechan ; my companion one 
"Tom Small," who had already been to college last 
year, and was thought to be a safe guide and guardian to 
me. He was some years older than myself, had been at 
school along with me, though never in my class. A very 
innocent, conceited, insignificant but strict-minded ortho- 
dox creature, for whom, knowing him to be of no scholar- 
ship or strength of judgment, I had privately very small 
respect, though civilly following him about in things he 
knew better than I. As in the streets of Edinburgh, for 
example, on my first evening there ! On our journey 
thither he had been wearisome, far from entertaining, 
mostly silent, having indeed nothing to say. He stalked 
on generally some steps ahead, languidly whistling 



2/2 LORD JEFFREY. 

through his teeth some simiHtude of a wretched Irish 
tune, which I knew too well as that of a still more 
wretched doggrel song called the '* Belfast Shoemaker," 
most melancholy to poor me, given up to my bits of re- 
flections in the silence of the moors and hills. 

How strangely vivid, how remote and wonderful, 
tinged with the hues of far-off love and sadness, is that 
journey to me now, after fifty-seven years of time ! My 
mother and father walking with me in the dark frosty 
November morning through the village to set us on our 
way ; my dear and loving mother and her tremulous af- 
fection, rny etc. etc. But we must get to Edinburgh, and 
Moffat, over Airock Stane (Burnswark visible there for 
the last time, and my poor httle sister Margaret ''burst- 
ing into tears " when she heard of this in my first letter 
home). I hid my sorrow and my weariness, but had 
abundance of it, chequering the mysterious hopes and 
forecastings of what Edinburgh and the student element 
would be. Tom and I had entered Edinburgh, after 
twenty miles of walking, between two and three P.M., got 
a clean-looking most cheap lodging (Simon Square the 
poor locality), had got ourselves brushed, some morsel of 
dinner doubtless, and Palinurus Tom sallied out into the 
streets with me to show the novice mind a little of Edin- 
burgh before sundown. The novice mind was not exces- 
sively astonished all at once, but kept its eyes well open 
and said nothing. What streets we went through I don't 
the least recollect, but have some faint image of St. Giles's 
High Kirk, and of the Luckenbooths there, with their 
strange little ins and outs, and eager old women in minia- 



LORD JEFFREY. 273 

ture shops of combs, shoelaces, and trifles ; still fainter 
image, if any whatever, of the sublime horse statue in 
Parliament Square hard by. Directly after which Smail, 
audaciously (so I thought), pushed open a door free to all 
the world, and dragged me in with him to a scene which 
I have never forgotten. 

An immense hall, dimly lighted from the top of the 
walls, and perhaps with candles burning in it here and 
there, all in strange chiaroscuro, and filled with what I 
thought (exaggeratively) a thousand or two of human 
creatures, all astir in a boundless buzz of talk, and sim- 
mering about in every direction, some solitary, some in 
groups. By degrees I noticed that some were in wig and 
black gown, some not, but in common clothes, all well 
dressed ; that here and there, on the sides of the hall, 
were little thrones with enclosures, and steps leading up, 
red-velvet figures sitting in said thrones, and the black- 
gowned eagerly speaking to them ; advocates pleading to 
judges, as I easily understood. How they could be heard 
in such a grinding din was somewhat a mystery. Higher 
up on the walls, stuck there like swallows in their nests, 
sate other humbler figures. These I found were the 
sources of certain wildly plangent lamentable kinds of 
sounds or echoes which from time to time pierced the 
universal noise of feet and voices, and rose unintelligibly 
above it as if in the bitterness of incurable woe. Criers 
of the Court, I gradually came to understand. And this 
was Themis in her " Outer House," such a scene of 
chaotic din and hurlyburly as I had never figured before. 

It seems to me there were four times or ten times as many 
18 



274 LORD JEFFREY. 

people in that " Outer House " as there now usually are, 
and doubtless there is something of fact in this, such have 
been the curtailments and abatements of law practice in 
the head courts since then, and transference of it to the 
county jurisdiction. Last time I was in that Outer House 
(some six or seven years ago, in broad daylight), it 
seemed like a place fallen asleep, fallen almost dead. 

Notable figures, now all vanished utterly, were doubt- 
less wandering about as part of that continual hurlyburly 
when I first set foot in it, fifty-seven years ago : great 
Law Lords this and that, great advocates alors celebres^ 
as Thiers has it ; Cranstoun, Cockburn, Jeffrey, Walter 
Scott, John Clerk. To me at that time they were not 
even names, but I have since occasionally thought of that 
night and place when probably they were living substan- 
ces, some of them in a kind of relation to me afterwards. 
Time with his tenses^ what a miraculous entity is he 
always ! The only figure I distinctly recollect and got 
printed on my brain that night was John Clerk, there 
veritably hitching about, whose grim strong countenance, 
with its black far-projecting brows and look of great 
sagacity, fixed him in my memory. Possibly enough 
poor Small named others to me, Jeffrey perhaps, if we 
saw him, though he was not yet quite at the top of his 
celebrity. Top was some three or four years afterwards, 
and went on without much drooping for almost twenty 
years more. But the truth is, except Clerk I carried no 
figure away with me ; nor do I in the least recollect how 
we made our exit into the streets again, or what we did 
next. Outer House, vivid now to a strange degree, is 



1 



LORD JEFFREY. 2/5 

bordered by darkness on both hands. I recall it for 
Jeffrey's sake, though we see it is but potentially his, and 
I mean not to speak much of his law procedures in what 
follows. 

Poor Smail, too, I may dismiss as thoroughly insig- 
nificant, conceitedly harmless. He continued in some 
comradeship with me (or with James Johnston and me), 
for perhaps two seasons more, but gained no regard from 
me, nor had any effect on me, good or bad. Became, 
with success, an insignificant flowery Burgher minister 
(somewhere in Galloway), and has died only within few 
years. Poor Jamie Johnston, also my senior by several 
years, was far dearer, a man of real merit, with whom 
about my 17th — 21st years I had much genial compan- 
ionship. But of him also I must not speak, the good, 
the honest, not the strong enough, much-suffering soul. 
He died as schoolmaster of Haddington in a time mem- 
orable to me. Ay de mi f 

It was about 181 1 when I began to be familiar with 
the figure of Jeffrey, as I saw him in the courts. It was 
in 1812-13 that he became universally famous, especially 
in Dumfriesshire, by his saving from the gallows one 
" Nell Kennedy," a country lass who had shocked all 
Scotland, and especially that region of it, by a wholesale 
murder, done on her next neighbour and all his house- 
hold in mass, in the most cold-blooded and atrocious 
manner conceivable to the oldest artist in such horrors. 
Nell went down to Ecclefechan one afternoon, purchased 
a quantity of arsenic, walked back with it towards Burns- 
wark Leas, her fathcT's farm, stopped at Burnswark 



2^^ LORD JEFFREY. 

Farm, which was old Tom Stoddart's, a couple of fur- 
longs short of her own home, and there sate gossiping 
till she pretended it was too late, and that she would now 
sleep with the maid. Slept accordingly, old Tom giving 
no welcome, only stingy permission ; rose with the 
family next morning, volunteered to make porridge for 
breakfast, made it, could herself take none of it, went 
home instead, " having a headache," and in an hour or so 
after poor old Tom, his wife, maid, and every living 
creature in the house (except a dog who had vomited, 
and 7iot except the cat who couldn't), was dead or lay 
dying. Horror was universal in those solitary quiet 
regions. On the third day my father finding no lawyer 
take the least notice, sent a messenger express to Dum- 
fries, whereupon the due precognitions, due et ceteras, 
due arrest of Helen Kennedy, with strict questioning and 
strict locking up as the essential element. I was in Edin- 
burgh that summer of 1812, but heard enough of the 
matter there. In the Border regions, where it was the 
universal topic, perhaps not one human creature doubted 
but Nell was the criminal, and would get her doom. 
Assize time came, Jeffrey there ; and Jeffrey by such a 
play of advocacy as was never seen before bewildered the 
poor jury into temporary deliquium or loss of wits (so 
that the poor foreman, Scottice chancellor, on whose 
casting vote it turned, said at last, with the sweat burst- 
ing from his brow, Mercy, then, mercy!) and brought 
Nell clear off; home that night, riding gently out of 
Dumfries in men's clothes to escape the rage of the mob. 
The jury chancellor, they say, on awakening next morn- 



LORD JEFFREY. 277 

ing, smote his now dry brow with a gesture of despair 
and exclaimed, "Was I mad?" I have heard from 
persons who were at the trial that Jeffrey's art in examin- 
infr of witnesses was extreme, that he made them seem to 
say almost what he would, and blocked them up from 
saying what they evidently wished to say. His other 
great resource was urging the "want of motive" on 
Nell's part ; no means of fancying how a blousy rustic 
lass should go into such a thing ; thing must have hap- 
pened otherwise ! And indeed the stagnant stupid soul 
of Nell, awake only to its own appetites, and torpid as 
dead bacon to all else in this universe, had needed un- 
commonly little motive. A blackguard young farmer of 
the neighbourhood, it was understood, had answered her 
in a trying circumstance, '* No, oh no, I cannot marry 
you. Tom Stoddart has a bill against me of 50/. / I 
have no money. How can I marry ? " ** Stoddart 50/.," 
thought Nell to herself ; and without difficulty decided on 
removing that small obstacle ! 

Jeffrey's advocate fame from this achievement was, at 
last, almost greater than he wished, as indeed it might 
well be. Nell was next year indicted again for murdering 
a child she had borne (supposed to be the blackguard 
young farmer's). She escaped this time too, by want of 
evidence and by good advocacy (not Jeffrey's, but the 
very best that could be hired by three old miser uncles, 
bringing out for her their long-hoarded stock with a gen- 
erosity nigh miraculous). Nell, free again, proceeded 
next to rob the treasure-chest of these three miraculous 
uncles one night, and leave them with their house on fire 



278 LORD JEFFREY. 

and singular reflections on so delectable a niece ; after 
which, for several years, she continued wandering in the 
Border byways, smuggling, stealing, etc. ; only intermit- 
tently heard of, but steadily mounting in evil fame, till she 
had become \\iQ facile princeps of Border devils, and was 
considered a completely uncanny and quasi-infernal ob- 
ject. Was found twice over in Cumberland ships, en- 
deavouring to get to America, sailors universally refusing 
to lift anchor till she were turned out ; did at length, 
most probably, smuggle herself through Liverpool or 
some other place to America ; at last vanished out of 
Annandaie, and was no more talked of there. I have 
seen her father mowing at Scotsbrig as a common day 
labourer in subsequent years, a snuffling, unpleasant, de- 
ceitful-looking body : very ill thought of while still a far- 
mer, and before his Nell took to murdering. Nell's three 
miraculous uncles were maternal, and were of a very hon- 
est kin. 

The merit of saving such an item of the world's popu- 
lation could not seem to Jeffrey very great, and it was 
said his brethren quizzed him upon it, and made him 
rather uncomfortable. Long after at Craigenputtoch, 
my Jeannie and I brought him on the topic : which he 
evidently did not like too well, but was willing to talk of 
for our sake and perhaps his own. He still affected to 
think it uncertain whether Nell was really guilty ; such 
an intrepidity, calmness, and steadfast immovability had 
she exhibited, persisting in mere unshaken " No " under 
the severest trials by him ; but there was no persuading 
us that he had the least real doubt, and not some real re- 



i 



LORD JEFFREY. 279 

gret rather. Advocate morality was clearly on his side. 
It is a strange trade, I have often thought, that of advo- 
cacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift, hung 
up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale ; will 
either blow out a pestilent scoundrel's brains, or the scoun- 
drel's salutary sheriffs officer's (in a sense), as you please 
to choose for your guinea ! Jeffrey rose into higher and 
higher professional repute from this time ; and to the last 
was very celebrated as what his satirists might have called 
a "felon's friend." All this, however, was swallowed 
among quite nobler kinds of renown, both as advocate 
and as "man of letters" and as member of society; 
everybody recognising his honourable ingenuity, sagacity, 
and opulent brilliancy of mind ; and nobody ascribing his 
felon help to anything but a pitying disposition and readi- 
ness to exercise what faculty one has, 

I seem to remember that I dimly rather felt there was 
something trivial, doubtful, and not quite of the highest 
type in our Edinburgh admiration for our great lights and 
law sages, and poor Jeffrey among the rest ; but I hon- 
estly admired him in a loose way as my neighbours were 
doing, was always glad to notice him when I strolled into 
the courts, and eagerly enough stept up to hear if I found 
him pleading ; a delicate, attractive, dainty little figure, 
as he merely walked about, much more if he were speak- 
ing ; uncommonly bright black eyes, instinct with viva- 
city, intelligence, and kindly fire ; roundish brow, deli- 
cate oval face full of rapid expression, figure light, nimble, 
pretty though so small, pechaps hardly five feet in height. 
He had his gown, almost never any wig, wore his black 



28o LORD JEFFREY. 

hair rather closely cropt ; I have seen the back part of it 
jerk suddenly out in some of the rapid expressions of his 
face, and knew even if behind him that his brow was then 
puckered, and his eyes looking archly, half contemptu- 
ously out, in conformity to some conclusive little cut his 
tongue was giving. His voice, clear, harmonious and 
sonorous, had something of metallic in it, something al- 
most plangent ; never rose into alt, into any dissonance 
or shrillness, nor carried much the character of humour, 
though a fine feeling of the ludicrous always dwelt in him 
— as you would notice best when he got into Scotch 
dialect, and gave you with admirable truth of mimicry, 
old Edinburgh incidents and experiences of his — very 
great upon old ''Judge Baxie," ''Peter Peebles" and 
the like. For the rest his laugh was small and by no 
means Homeric ; he never laughed loud (could not do it, 
I should think) and indeed oftener sniggered slightly than 
laughed in any way. 

For above a dozen or fourteen years I had been out- 
wardly famihar with the figure of Jeffrey before we came 
to any closer acquaintance, or indeed, had the least pros- 
pect of any. His sphere lay far away above mine ; to 
him in his shining elevation my existence down among the 
shadows was unknown. In May 1814 I heard him once 
pleading in the General Assembly, on some poor cause 
there ; a notable, but not the notablest thing to me, while 
I sate looking dihgently, though mostly as dramatic spec- 
tator, into the procedure of that venerable Church Court 
for the first time, which proved also the last. Queer old 
figures there ; Hill of St. Andrews, Johnston of Car- 



LORD JEFFREY. 28 1 

michael, Dr. Inglis with the voice jingling in perpetual 
unforeseen alternation between deep bass and shrill treble 
(ridiculous to hear though shrewd cunning sense lay in it), 
Dr. Chalmers once, etc. etc. ; all vanished now ! Jeffrey's 
pleading, the first I had heard of him, seemed to me abun- 
dantly clever, full of livehness, free flowing ingenuity ; my 
admiration went frankly with that of others, but I think 
was hardly of very deep character. 

This would be the year I went to Annan as teacher of 
mathematics ; not a gracious destiny, nor by any means 
a joyful, indeed a hateful, sorrowful and imprisoning one, 
could I at all have helped it, which I could not. My 
second year there at Rev. Mr. Glen's (reading Newton's 
'* Principia " till three A.M.; and voraciously many other 
books) was greatly more endurable, nay in parts was 
genial and spirited, though the paltry trade and ditto en- 
vironment for the most part were always odious to me. 
In late autumn 18 16 I went to Kirkcaldy in like capacit\% 
though in circumstances (what with Edward Irving's 
company, what with, etc. etc.) which were far superior. 
There in 181 8 I had come to the grim conclusion that 
school-mastering must end, whatever pleased to follow ; 
that ** it were better to perish," as I exaggeratively said 
to myself, "than continue schoolmastering." I made for 
Edinburgh, as did Irving too, intending, I, darkly 
towards potential " literature," if I durst have said or 
thought so. But hope hardly dwelt in me on that or on 
any side ; only fierce resolution in abundance to do my 
best and utmost in all honest ways, and to suffer as silently 
and stoically as might be, if it proved (as too likely !) that 



282 LORD JEFFREY. 

I could do nothing. This kind of humour, what I some- 
times called of ''desperate hope," has largely attended 
me all my life. In short, as has been enough indicated 
elsewhere, I was advancing towards huge instalments of 
bodily and spiritual wretchedness in this my Edinburgh 
purgatory ; and had to clean and purify myself in penal 
fire of various kinds for several years coming ; the first 
and much the worst two or three of which were to be 
enacted in this once-loved city. Horrible to think of in 
part even yet ! The bodily part of them was a kind of 
base agony (arising mainly in the want of any extant or 
discoverable fence between my coarser fellow-creatures 
and my more sensitive self), and might and could easily 
(had the age been pious or thoughtful) have been spared 
a poor creature like me. Those hideous disturbances to 
sleep etc., a very little real care and goodness might pre- 
vent all that ; and I look back upon it still with a kind of 
angry protest, and would have my successors saved from 
it. But perhaps one needs suffering more than at first 
seems, and the spiritual agonies would not have been 
enough ! These latter seem wholly blessed in retrospect, 
and were infinitely worth suffering, with whatever addition 
was needful ! God be thanked always. 

It was still some eight or ten years before any personal 
contact occurred between Jeffrey and me ; nor did I ever 
tell him what a bitter passage, known to only one party, 
there had been between us. It was probably in 1819 or 
1820 (the coldest winter I ever knew) that I had taken a 
most private resolution and executed it in spite of physi- 
cal and other misery, to try Jeffrey with an actual contri- 



LORD JEFFREY. 283 

bution to the " Edinburgh Review." The idea seemed 
great and might be tried, though nearly desperate. I 
had got hold somewhere (for even books were all but in- 
accessible to me) of a foolish enough, but new French 
book, a mechanical theory of gravitation elaborately- 
worked out by a late foolish M. Pictet (I think that was 
the name) in Geneva. This I carefully read, judged of, 
and elaborately dictated a candid account and condemna- 
tion of, or modestly firm contradiction of (my amanuensis 
a certain feeble but enquiring quasi-disciple of mine called 
George Dalgleish of Annan, from whom I kept my ulte- 
rior purpose quite secret). Well do I remember those 
dreary evenings in Bristo Street ; oh, what ghastly pas- 
sages and dismal successive spasms of attempt at " liter- 
ary enterprise " — '' Herclii Selenographia," with poor 
Horrox's " Venus in Sole visa," intended for some life of 
the said Horrox — this for one other instance ! I read all 
Saussure's four quartos of Travels in Switzerland too (and 
still remember much of it) I know not with what object. 
I was banished solitary as if to the bottom of a cave, and 
blindly had to try many impossible roads out ! My 
** Review of Pictet " all fairly written out in George 
Dalgleish's good clerk hand, I penned some brief polite 
note to the great editor, and walked off with the small 
parcel one night to his address in George Street. I very 
well remember leaving it with his valet there, and dis- 
appearing in the night with various thoughts and doubts ! 
My hopes had never risen high, or in fact risen at all ; 
but for a fortnight or so they did not quite die out, and 
then it was in absolute Zero; no answer, no return of MS., 



284 LORD JEFFREY. 

absolutely no notice taken, which was a form of catas- 
trophe more complete than even ^I had anticipated ! 
There rose in my head a pungent little note which might 
be written to the great man, with neatly cutting consider- 
ations offered him from the small unknown ditto ; but I 
wisely judged it was still more dignified to let the matter 
lie as it was, and take what I had got for my own benefit 
only. Nor did I ever mention it to almost anybody, least 
of all to Jeffrey in subsequent changed times, when at any 
rate it was fallen extinct. It was my second, not quite 
my first attempt in that fashion. Above two years be- 
fore, from Kirkcaldy, I had forwarded to some magazine 
editor in Edinburgh what, perhaps, was a likelier little 
article (of descriptive tourist kind after a real tour by 
Yarrow country into Annandale) which also vanished with- 
out sign ; not much to my regret that first one, nor indeed 
very much the second either (a dull affair altogether I 
could not but admit), and no third adventure of the kind 
lay ahead for me. It must be owned my first entrances 
into glorious '* literature " were abundantly stinted and 
pitiful ; but a man does enter if, even with a small gift, 
he persists ; and perhaps it is no disadvantage If the door 
be several times slammed in his face, as a preliminary. 

In spring 1827, I suppose it must have been, a letter 
came to me at Comley Bank ^ from Procter (Barry Corn- 
wall, my quondam London acquaintance) offering, with 
some ** congratulations " etc., to introduce me formally 
to Jeffrey, whom he certified to be a **very fine fellow," 
with much kindness In him among his other known quali- 
' Carlyle's first home after his marriage ; a suburb of Edinburgh. 



LORD JEFFREY. 285 

ties. Comley Bank, except for one darling soul, whose 
heavenly nobleness, then as ever afterwards, shone on me, 
and should have made the darkest place bright (ah me, 
ah me ! I only know now how noble she was !), was a 
gloomy intricate abode to me ; and in retrospect has little 
or nothing of pleasant but her. This of Jeffrey, however, 
had a practical character of some promise ; and I remem- 
ber striding off with Procter's introduction one evening 
towards George Street and Jeffrey (perhaps by appoint- 
ment of hour and place by himself) in rather good spirits. 
'* I shall see the famous man then," thought I, "and if 
he can do nothing for me, why not! " I got ready ad- 
mission into Jeffrey's study, or rather '' office," for it had 
mostly that air ; a roomy, not over neat apartment on 
the ground floor, with a big baize-covered table, loaded 
with book rows and paper bundles. On one or perhaps 
two of the walls were bookshelves likewise well filled, but 
with books in tattery, ill-bound or unbound condition. 
**Bad new literature these will be," thought I; ''the 
table ones are probably on hand ! " Five pair of candles 
were cheerfully burning, in the light of which sate my 
famous little gentleman ; laid aside his work, cheerfully 
invited me to sit, and began talking in a perfectly human 
manner. Our dialogue was perfectly human and success- 
ful ; lasted for perhaps twenty minutes (for I could not 
consume a great man's time), turned upon the usual top- 
ics, what I was doing, what I had published, " German 
Romance," translations my last thing ; to which I remem- 
ber he said kindly, "We must give you a lift," an offer 
which in some compHmentary way I managed to his satis- 



286 LORD JEFFREY. 

faction to decline. My feeling with him was that oi un- 
embarrassment ; a reasonable veracious little man I could 
perceive, with whom any truth one felt good to utter 
would have a fair chance. Whether much was said of 
German literature, whether anything at all on my writing 
of it for him, I don't recollect ; but certainly I took my 
leave in a gratified successful kind of mood ; and both 
those topics, the latter in practical form, did soon abun- 
dantly spring up between us, with formal return call by 
him (which gave a new speed to intimacy), agreement for 
a little paper on ''Jean Paul," and whatever could follow 
out of an acquaintanceship well begun. The poor paper 
on Jean Paul, a study piece, not without humour and sub- 
stance of my own, appeared in (I suppose) the very next 
*' Edinburgh Review " ; and made what they call a sensa- 
tion among the Edinburgh buckrams ; which was greatly 
heightened next number by the more elaborate and grave 
article on ''German Literature" generally, which set 
many tongues wagging, and some few brains consider- 
ing, what this strange monster could be that was come 
to disturb their quiescence and the established order of 
Nature ! Some newspapers or newspaper took to de- 
nouncing "the Mystic School," which my bright little 
woman declared to consist of me alone, or of her and me, 
and for a long while after merrily used to designate us 
by that title ; " Mystic School " signifying tis, in the pretty 
coterie speech, which she was always so ready to adopt, 
and which lent such a charm to her talk and writing. She 
was beautifully gay and hopeful under these improved 
phenomena, the darhng soul ! " Foreign Review," " For- 



LORD JEFFREY. 28/ 

eign Quarterly," etc., followed, to which I was eagerly 
invited. Articles for Jeffrey (about parts of which I had 
always to dispute with him) appeared also from time to 
time. In a word, I was now in a soi't fairly launched 
upon literature, and had even to sections of the public 
became a ''Mystic School;" not quite prematurely, 
being now of the age of thirty-two, and having had my 
bits of experiences, and gotten really something which I 
wished much to say — and have ever since been saying 
the best way I could. 

After Jeffrey's call at Comley Bank, the intimacy 
rapidly increased. He was much taken with my little 
Jeannie, as he well might be : one of the brightest and 
cleverest creatures in the whole world ; full of innocent 
rustic simplicity and veracity, yet with the gracefullest 
discernment, calmly natural deportment ; instinct with 
beauty and intelligence to the finger-ends ! He became, 
in a sort, her would-be openly declared friend and quasi- 
lover ; as was his way in such cases. He had much the 
habit of flirting about with women, especially pretty 
women, much more the both pretty and clever ; all in a 
weakish, mostly dramatic, and wholly theoretic way (his 
age now fifty gone) ; would daintily kiss their hands in 
bidding good morning, offer his due Jiomagey as he 
phrased it ; trip about, half like a lap-dog, half like a 
human adorer, with speeches pretty and witty, always 
of trifling import. I have known some women (not the 
prettiest) take offence at it, and awkwardly draw them- 
selves up, but without the least putting him out. The 
most took it quietly, kindly, and found an entertainment 



288 LORD JEFFREY. 

to themselves in cleverly answering it, as he did in pertly 
offering it ; pertly, yet with something of real reverence, 
and always in a dexterous light way. Considerable jeal- 
ousy attended the reigning queen of his circle among the 
now non-reigning : who soon detected her position, and 
gave her the triumph of their sometimes half-visible 
spleen. An airy environment of this kind was, wherever 
possible, a coveted charm in Jeffrey's way of life. I can 
fancy he had seldom made such a surprising and agree- 
able acquaintance as this new one at Comley Bank ! My 
little woman perfectly understood all that sort of thing, 
the methods and the rules of it ; and could lead her clever 
little gentleman a very pretty minuet, as far as she saw 
good. They discovered mutual old cousinships by the 
maternal side, soon had common topics enough : I believe 
he really entertained a sincere regard and affection for 
her, in the heart of his theoretic dangling ; which latter 
continued unabated for several years to come, with not a 
little quizzing and light interest on her part, and without 
shadow of offence on mine, or on anybody's. Nay, I had 
my amusements in it too, so naive, humorous and pretty 
were her bits of narratives about it, all her procedures in 
it so dainty delicate and sure — the noble little soul! Sus- 
picion of her nobleness would have been mad in me ; and 
could I grudge her the little bit of entertainment she 
might be able to extract from this poor harmless sport 
in a life so grim as she cheerfully had with me ? My 
Jeannie ! oh my bonny little Jeannie ! how did I ever 
deserve so queenlike a heart from thee ? Ah me ! 

Jeffrey's acquaintanceship seemed, and was for the 



LORD JEFFREY. 289 

time, an immense acquisition to me, and everybody re- 
garded it as my highest good fortune ; though in the end 
it did not practically amount to much. Meantime it was 
very pleasant, and made us feel as if no longer cut off and 
isolated, but fairly admitted, or like to be admitted, and 
taken in tow by the world and its actualities. Jeffrey had 
begun to feel some form of bad health at this time (some 
remains of disease in the trachea, caught on circuit some- 
where, " successfully defending a murderess " it was said). 
He rode almost daily, in intervals of court business, a slow 
amble, easy to accompany on foot ; and I had much 
walking with him, and many a pleasant sprightly dialogue, 
cheerful to my fancy (as speech with an important man) 
but less instructive than I might have hoped. To my re- 
gret, he would not. talk of his experiences in the world, 
which I considered v/ould have been so instructive to me, 
nor of things concrete and current, but was theoretic gen- 
erally ; and seemed bent on, first of all, converting me 
from what he called my " German mysticism," back 
merely, as I could perceive, into dead Edinburgh Whig- 
gism, scepticism, and materialism ; which I felt to be a 
for ever impossible enterprise. We had long discussions 
and argumentative parryings and thrustings, which I have 
known continue night after night till two or three in the 
morning (when I was his guest at Craigcrook, as once or 
twice happened in coming years) : there we went on in 
brisk logical exercise with all the rest of the house asleep, 
and parted usually in good humour, though after a game 
which was hardly worth the candle. I found him infinite- 
ly witty, ingenious, sharp of fence, but not in any sense 
19 



290 LORD JEFFREY. 

deep ; and used without difficulty to hold my own with 
him. A pleasant enough exercise, but at last not a very 
profitable one. 

He was ready to have tried anything in practical help 
of me ; and did, on hint given, try two things : vacant 
"Professorship of Moral Philosophy " at St. Andrews; 
ditto of something similar (perhaps it was "English Lit- 
erature ") in the new Gower Street University at London ; 
but both (thank heaven !) came summarily to nothing. 
Nor were his review articles any longer such an important 
employment to me, nor had they ever been my least 
troublesome undertakings — plenty of small discrepancy 
about details as we went along, though no serious dis- 
agreement ever, and his treatment throughout was liberal 
and handsome. Indeed he had much.patience with me, I 
must say ; for there was throughout a singular freedom in 
my way of talk with him ; and though far from wishing or 
intending to be disrespectful, I doubt there was at times 
an unembarrassment and frankness of hitting and repelling, 
which did not jquite beseem our respective ages and posi- 
tions. He never testified the least offence, but possibly 
enough remembered it afterwards, being a thin-skinned 
sensitive man, with all his pretended pococurantism and 
real knowledge of what is called the " world." I remem- 
ber pleasant strolls out to Craigcrook (one of the prettiest 
places in the world), where on a Sunday especially I 
might hope, what w^as itself a rarity with me, to find a 
really companionable human acquaintance, not to say one 
of such quality as this. He would wander about the 
woods with me, looking on the Firth and Fife Hills, on 



LORD JEFFREY. 291 

the Pentlands and Edinburgh Castle and City ; nowhere 
was there such a view. Perhaps he would walk most of 
the way back with me ; quietly sparkling and chatting, 
probably quizzing me in a kind of way if his wife were 
with us, as sometimes happened. If I met him in the 
streets, in the Parliament House, or accidentally any- 
where, there ensued, unless he were engaged, a cheerful 
bit of talk and promenading. He frequently rode round 
by Comley Bank in returning home : and there I would 
see him, or hear something pleasant of him. He never 
rode fast, but at a walk, and his little horse was steady as 
machinery. He on horseback, I on foot, was a freqifent 
form of our dialogues. I suppose we must. have dined 
sometimes at Craigcrook or Moray Place in this incipient 
period, but don't recollect. 

The incipient period was probably among the best, 
though for a long while afterwards there was no falling off 
in intimacy and good will. But sunrise is often lovelier 
than noon. Much in this first stage was not yet fulfilment, 
and was enhanced by the colours of hope. There was 
the new feehng too, of what a precious conquest aftd ac- 
quisition had fallen to us, which all the world might envy. 
Certainly in every sense the adventure was a flattering 
and cheering one, and did both of us good. I forget how 
long it had lasted before our resolution to remove to 
Craigenputtoch came to be fulfilled, it seems to me some 
six or eight months. The flitting to Craigenputtoch took 
place in May 1828 ; we stayed a week in Moray Place 
(Jeffrey's fine new house there) after our furniture was on 
the road, and we were waiting till it should arrive and 



292 LORD JEFFREY. 

render a new home possible amid the moors and moun- 
tains. Jeffrey promised to follow us thither, with wife 
and daughter for three days in vacation time ensuing, to 
see what kind of a thing we were making of it, which of 
course was great news. Doubtless he, like most of my 
Edinburgh acquaintances had been strongly dissuasive 
of the step w^e were taking ; but his or other people's ar- 
guments availed nothing, and I have forgotten them. 
The step had been well meditated, saw itself to be founded 
on irrefragable considerations of health, finance, etc. etc., 
unknown to bystanders, and could not be forborne or al- 
tered. '' I will come and see you at any rate," said Jef- 
frey, and dismissed us with various expressions of interest, 
and no doubt with something of real regret. 

Of our history at Craigenputtoch there might a great 
deal be written which might amuse the curious ; for it was 
in fact a very singular scene and arena for such a pair as 
my darling and me, with such a life ahead ; and bears 
some analogy to the settlement of Robinson Crusoe in 
his desert isle, surrounded mostly by the wild popula- 
tions, not wholly helpful or even harmless ; and requiring 
for its equipment into habitability and convenience infi- 
nite contrivance, patient adjustment, and natural ingenu- 
ity in the head of Robinson himself It is a history which 
I by no means intend to write, with such or with any ob- 
ject. To me there is a sacred^iess of interest in it consist- 
ent only with silejice. It was the field of endless noble- 
ness and beautiful talent and virtue in her who is now 
gone ; also of good industry, and many loving and blessed 
thoughts in myself, while living there by her side. Pov- 



LORD JEFFREY. 293 

erty and mean obstruction had given origin to it, and con- 
tinued to preside over it ; but were transformed by hu- 
man valour of various sorts into a kind of victory and roy- 
alty. Something of high and great dwelt in it, though 
nothing could be smaller and lower than many of the de- 
tails. How blessed might poor mortals be in the straitest 
circumstances, if only their wisdom and fidelity to Heaven 
and to one another were adequately great ! It looks to me 
now like a kind of humble russet- coated epic, that seven 
years' settlement at Craigenputtoch, very poor in this 
world's goods but not without an intrinsic dignity greater 
and more important than then appeared ; thanks very 
mainly to her, and her faculties and magnanimities, with- 
out w^hom it had not been possible. I incline to think it 
the poor best place that could have been selected for the 
ripening into fixity and composure of anything useful 
which there may have been in me against the years that 
were coming. And it is certain that for living in and 
thinking in, I have never since found in the world a place 
so favourable. And we were driven and pushed into it, 
as if by necessity, and its beneficent though ugly little 
shocks and pushes, shock after shock, gradually compel- 
ling us thither! " For a divinity doth shape our ends, 
rough hew them how we may." Often in my life have I 
been brought to think of this, as probably every consider- 
ing person is ; and looking before and after, have felt, 
though reluctant enough to believe in the importance or 
significance of so infinitesimally small an atom as oneself, 
that the doctrine of a special providence is in some sort 
natural to man. All piety points that way, all logic points 



^94 LORD JEFFREY. 

the other ; one has in one's darkness and limitation a 
trembling faith, and can at least with the voices say, *' Wir 
heissen euch hoffen^' if it be the will of the Highest. 

The Jeffreys failed not to appear at Craigenputtoch ; 
their big carriage climbed our rugged hill-roads, landed 
the three guests— Charlotte ('' Sharlie ") with pa and ma 
— and the clever old valet maid that waited on them ; 
stood three days under its glazed sheeting in our little 
back court, nothing Hke a house got ready for it, and in- 
deed all the outhouses and appurtenances still in a much 
unfinished state, and only the main house quite ready and 
habitable. The visit was pleasant and successful, but I 
recollect few or no particulars. Jeffrey and I rode one 
day (or perhaps this was on another visit ?) round by the 
flank of Dunscore Craig, the Shillingland and Craigenery ; 
and took a view of' Loch Gor and the black moorlands 
round us, with the Granite mountains of Galloway over- 
hanging in the distance ; not a beautiful landscape, but it 
answered as well as another. Our party, the head of it 
especially, was chatty and cheery ; but I remember noth- 
ing so well as the consummate art with which my dear 
one played the domestic field-marshal, and spread out our 
exiguous resources, without fuss or bustle ; to cover every- 
thing a coat of hospitality and even elegance and abun- 
dance. I have been in houses ten times, nay a hundred 
times as rich, where things went not so well. Though 
never bred to this, but brought up in opulent plenty by 
a mother that could bear no partnership in housekeeping, 
she finding it become necessary, loyally applied herself to 
it, and soon surpassed in it all the women I have ever 



LORD JEFFREY. 295 

seen. My noble one, how beautiful has our poverty made 
thee to me ! She was so true and frank withal ; nothing 
of the skulking Balderstone in her. One day at dinner, 
I remember, Jeffrey admired the fritters orbits of pancake 
he was eating, and she let him know, not without some 
vestige of shock to him, that she had made them. 
"What, you ! twist up the frying-pan and catch them in 
the air ? " Even so, my high friend, and you may turn it 
over in your mind ! On the fourth or third day the Jef- 
freys went, and ** carried off our little temporary para- 
dise," as I sorrowfully expressed it to them, while shutting 
their coach door in our back yard ; to which bit of pathos 
Jeffrey answered by a friendly little sniff of quasi-mockery 
or laughter through the nose, and rolled prosperously 
away. 

' They paid at least one other visit, probably not just 
next year, but the one following. We met them by ap- 
pointment at Dumfries (I think in the intervening year), 
and passed a night with them in the King's Arms there, 
which I well enough recollect ; huge ill-kept '* head inn," 
bed opulent in bugs, waiter a monstrous baggy unwieldy 
old figure, hebetated, dreary, as if parboiled ; upon whom 
Jeffrey quizzed his daughter at breakfast, *' Comes all of 
eating eggs, Sharlie ; poor man as good as owned it to 
me ! " After breakfast he went across with my wife to 
visit a certain Mrs. Richardson, authoress of some novels, 
really a superior kind of woman and much a lady ; who 
had been an old flame of his, perhaps twenty-five or 
thirty years before. '* These old loves don't do," said 
Mrs. Jeffrey with easy sarcasm, who was left behind with 



296 LORD JEFFREY. 

me. And accordingly there had been some embarrass- 
ment I after found, but on both sides a gratifying of 
some good though melancholy feelings. 

This Mrs. Jeffrey was the American Miss Wilkes, 
whose marriage Avith Jeffrey, or at least his voyage across 
to marry her, had made considerable noise in its time. 
She was mother of this " Sharlie " (who is now the widow 
Mrs. Empson, a morbidly shy kind of creature, who lives 
withdrawn among her children at Harrogate and such 
places). Jeffrey had no other child. His first wife, a 
Hunter of St. Andrews, had died very soon. This sec- 
ond, the American Miss Wilkes, was from Pennsylvania, 
actual brother's daughter of our demagogue " Wilkes." 
She was sister of the '' Commodore Wilkes " who boarded 
the Trent some years ago, and almost involved us in war 
with Yankeeland, during that beautiful Nigger agony or 
"civil war" of theirs!^ She was roundish-featured, not 
pretty but comely, a sincere and hearty kind of woman, 
with a great deal of clear natural insight, often sarcasti- 
cally turned ; to which a certain nervous tic or jerk of 
the head gave new emphasis or singularity ; for her talk 
went roving about in a loose random way, and hit down 
like a flail unexpectedly on this or that, with the jerk for 
accompaniment, in a really genial fashion. She and I 
were mutual favourites. She liked my sincerity as I hers. 
The daughter Charlotte had inherited her nervous infirm- 

' Some years after these words were written, Carlyle read '' The Harvard 
Memorial Biographies." He was greatly impressed by the account of the 
gallant young men whose lives are there described, and said to me, *' Perhaps 
there was more in that matter after all than I was aware of." — J. A. F. 



LORD JEFFREY. 297 

ity, and Indeed I think was partly lame of one arm ; for 
the rest an inferior specimen to either of her parents ; ab- 
struse, suspicious, timid, enthusiastic ; and at length, on 
death of her parents and of her good old jargoning hus- 
band, Empson (along-winded Edinburgh Reviewer, much 
an adorer of ]\Iacaulay etc.) became quite a morbid exclu- 
sive character, and lives withdrawn as above. Perhaps 
she was already rather jealous of us ? She spoke very 
httle ; wore a half-pouting, half-mocking expression, and 
had the air of a prettyish spoiled child. 

The '* old love " business finished, our friends soon 
rolled away, and left us to go home at leisure, in our 
good old gig (value ill.) which I always look back upon 
with a kind of veneration, so sound and excellent was it, 
though so unfashionable ; the conquest of good Alick, my 
ever shifty brother, which carried us many a pleasant mile 
till Craigenputtoch ended. Probably the Jeffreys were 
bound for Cumberland on this occasion, to see Brougham ; 
of whom, as I remember, Mrs. Jeffrey spoke to me with 
candour, not with enthusiasm, during that short ** old 
love " absence. Next year, it must have been, they all 
came again to Craigenputtoch, and with more success 
than ever. 

One of the nights there, on this occasion, encouraged 
possibly by the presence of poor James Anderson, an in- 
genuous, simple, youngish man, and our nearest gentle- 
man neighbour, Jeffrey in the drawing-room was cleverer, 
brighter, and more amusing than I ever saw him else- 
where. We had got to talk of public speaking, of which 
Jeffrey had plenty to say, and found Anderson and all of 



298 LORD JEFFREY. 

US ready enough to hear. Before long he fell into mim- 
icking of public speakers, men unknown, perhaps imagi- 
nary generic specimens ; and did it with such a felicity, 
flowing readiness, ingenuity and perfection of imitation as 
I never saw equalled, and had not given him credit for 
before. Our cosy little drawing-room, bright-shining, 
hidden in the lowly wilderness, how beautiful it looked to 
us, become suddenly as it were a Temple of the Muses. 
The little man strutted about full of electric fire, with 
attitudes, with gesticulations, still more with winged words, 
often broken-winged, amid our admiring laughter ; gave 
us the windy grandiloquent specimen, the ponderous stu- 
pid, the airy ditto, various specimens, as the talk, chiefly 
his own, spontaneously suggested, of which there was a 
little preparatory interstice between each two. And the 
mimicry was so complete, you would have said not his 
mind only, but his very body became the specimen's, his 
face filled with the expression represented, and his little 
figure seeming to grow gigantic if the personage required 
it. At length he gave us the abstruse costive specimen, 
which had a meaning and no utterance for it, but went 
about clambering, stumbling, as on a path of loose boul- 
ders, and ended in total downbreak, amid peals of the 
heartiest laughter from us all. This of the aerial little 
sprite standing there in fatal collapse, with the brightest 
of eyes sternly gazing into utter nothingness and dumb- 
ness, was one of the most tickling and genially ludicrous 
things I ever saw ; and it prettily winded up our little 
drama. I often thought of it afterwards, and of what a 
part mimicry plays among human gifts. In its lowest 



LORD JEFFREY. 299 

phase no talent can be lower (for even the Papuans and 
monkeys have it) ; but in its highest, where it gives you 
domicile in the spiritual world of a Shakspeare or a 
Goethe, there are only some few that are higher. . No 
clever man, I suppose, is originally without it. Dick- 
ens's essential faculty, I often say, is that of a first-rate 
play-actor. Had he been born twenty or forty years 
sooner, we should most probably have had a second and 
greater Mathews, Incledon, or the like, and no writing 
Dickens. 

It was probably next morning after this (one of these 
mornings it certainjy was), that we received, i.e. Jeffrey 
did (I think through my brother John, then vaguely trying 
for "medical practice" in London, and present on the 
scene referred to), a sternly brief letter from poor Hazlitt, 
to the effect and almost in the words, ''Dear sir, I am 
dying ; can you send me 10/., and so consummate your 
many kindnesses to me? W. Hazlitt." This was for 
Jeffrey; my brother's letter to me, enclosing it, would of 
course elucidate the situation. Jeffrey, with true sympa- 
thy, at once wrote a cheque for 50/., and poor HazHtt 
died in peace', from duns at least. He seemed to have no 
old friends about, to have been left in his poor lodging to 
the humanity of medical people and transient recent ac- 
quaintances ; and to have died in a grim stoical humour, 
like a worn-out soldier in hospital. The new doctor peo- 
ple reckoned that a certain Dr. Darling, the first called 
in, had fatally mistreated him. Hazlitt had just finished 
his toilsome, unrewarded (not quite worthless) '* Life of 
Napoleon," which at least recorded his own loyal admira- 



300 LORD JEFFREY. 

tion and quasi-adoration of that questionable person ; 
after which he felt excessively worn and low, and was by 
unlucky Dr. Darling recommended, not to port wine, 
brown soup, and the hke generous regimen, but to a 
course of purgatives and blue pill, which irrecoverably 
wasted his last remnants of strength, and brought him to 
his end in this sad way. Poor Hazlitt ! he was never ad- 
mirable to me ; but I had my estimation of him, my pity 
for him ; a man recognisably of fine natural talents and 
aspirations, but of no sound culture whatever, and flung 
into the roaring cauldron of stupid, prurient, anarchic 
London, there to try if he could find some culture for 
himself. 

This was Jeffrey's last visit to Craigenputtoch. I forget 
when it was (probably next autumn late) that we made 
our fortnight's visit to Craigcrook and him. That was a 
shining sort of affair, but did not in effect accomplish 
much for any of us. Perhaps, for one thing, we stayed 
too long, Jeffrey was beginning to be seriously incom- 
moded in health, had bad sleep, cared not how late he 
sat, and we had now more than ever a series of sharp 
fencing bouts, night after night, which could decide 
nothing for either of us, except our radical incompatibility 
in respect of world theory, and the incurable divergence 
of our opinions on the most important matters. *'You 
are so dreadfully in earnest ! " said he to me once or 
oftener. Besides, I own now I was deficient in reverence 
to him, and had not then, nor, alas ! have ever acquired 
in my solitary and mostly silent existence, the art of gen- 
tly saying strong things, or of insinuating my dissent, 



i 



LORD JEFFREY. 3OI 

instead of uttering it right out at the risk of offence or 
otherwise. At bottom I did not find his the highest kind 
of insight in regard to any province whatever. In litera- 
ture he had a respectable range of reading, but discovered 
little serious study ; and had no views which I could adopt 
in preference [to my own]. On all subjects I had to re- 
fuse him the title of deep, and secretly to acquiesce in 
much that the new opposition party (Wilson, Lockhart, 
etc., who had broken out so outrageously in "Black- 
wood " for the last ten years) were alleging against the 
old excessive Edinburgh hero-worship; an unpleasant 
fact, which probably was not quite hidden to so keen a 
pair of eyes. One thing struck me in sad elucidation of 
his forensic glories. I found that essentially he was always 
as if speaking to a jury ; that the thing of which he could 
not convince fifteen clear-headed men, Avas to him a no- 
thing, good only to be flung over the lists, and left lying 
without notice farther. This seemed to me a very sad 
result of law ! For " the highest cannot be spoken of in 
words," as Goethe truly says, as in fact all truly deep men 
say or know. I urged this on his consideration now and 
then, but without the least acceptance. These '* stormy 
sittings," as Mrs. Jeffrey laughingly called them, did not 
improve our relation to one another. But these were the 
last we had of that nature. In other respects Edinburgh 
had been barren ; effulgences of " Edinburgh society," 
big dinners, parties, we in due measure had ; but nothing 
there was very interesting either to ker or to me, and all 
of it passed away as an obliging pageant merely. Well 
do I remember our return to Craigenputtoch, after night- 



302 LORD JEFFREY. 

fall, amid the clammy yellow leaves and desolate rains, 
with the clink of Alick's stithy alone audible of human, 
and have marked it elsewhere. 

A great deal of correspondence there still was, and all 
along had been ; many Jeffrey letters to me and many to 
her, which were all cheerfully answered. I know not what 
has become of all these papers ; ' by me they never were 
destroyed, though indeed, neither hers nor mine were 
ever of much importance except for the passing moment. 
I ought to add that Jeffrey, about this time (next summer I 
should think), generously offered to confer on me an annu- 
ity of lOO/., which annual sum, had it fallen on me from 
the clouds, would have been of very high convenience at 
that time, but which I could not for a moment have 
dreamt of accepting as gift or subventionary help from 
any fellow-mortal. It was at once in my handsomest, 
gratefullest, but brief and conclusive way [declined] from 
Jeffrey : * ' Republican equality the silently fixed law of 
human society at present ; each man to live on his own 
resources, and have an equality of economies with every 
other man ; dangerous a,nd not possible, except through 
cowardice or folly, to depart from said clear rule, till per- 
haps a better era rise on us again ! " Jeffrey returned to 
the charge twice over in handsome enough sort ; but my 
new answer was in briefest words a repetition of the former, 
and the second time I answered nothing at all, but stood 
by other topics ; upon which the matter dropped alto- 
gether. It was not mere pride of mine that frustrated 
this generous resolution, but sober calculation as well, and 
' All preserved and in my possession. — Editor. 



LORD JEFFREY. 3^3 

correct weighing of the results probable in so dangerous 
a copartnery as that proposed. In no condition well con- 
ceivable to me could such a proposal have been accepted, 
and though I could not doubt but Jeffrey had intended an 
act of real generosity, for which I was and am grateful, 
perhaps there was something in the manner of it that 
savoured of consciousness and of screwing one's self up 
to the point ; less of godlike pity for a fine fellow and his 
struggles, than of human determination to do a fine action 
of one's own, which might add to the promptitude of my 
refusal. He had abundance of money, but he was not of 
that opulence which could render such an "annuity," in 
case I should accept it, totally insensible to him ; I there- 
fore endeavoured all the more to be thankful ; and if the 
heart would not quite do (as was probably the case), 
forced the intellect to take part, which it does at this day. 
Jeffrey's beneficence was undoubted, and his gifts to poor 
people in distress w^ere a known feature of his way of Hfe. 
I once, some months after this, borrowed lool. from him, 
my pitiful bits of '* periodical literature " incomings having 
gone awry (as they were too liable to do), but was able, I 
still remember with what satisfaction, to repay punctually 
within a few weeks ; and this was all of pecuniary chivalry 
we two ever had between us. 

Probably he was rather cooling in his feelings towards 
me, if they ever had been very warm ; so obstinate and 
rugged had he found me, "so dreadfully in earnest!" 
And now the time of the Reform Bill was coming on ; 
Jeffrey and all high Whigs getting summoned into an of- 
ficial career ; and a scene opening which (in effect), in- 



304 LORD JEFFREY. 

stead of irradiating with new glory and value, completely 
clouded the remaining years of Jeffrey's life. His health 
had for some years been getting weaker, and proved now 
unequal to his new honours ; that was the fatal circum- 
stance which rendered all the others irredeemable. He was 
not what you could call ambitious, rather the reverse of 
that, though he relished public honours, especially if they 
could be interpreted to signify public love, I remember 
his great pleasure in having been elected Dean of Faculty, 
perhaps a year or so before this very thing of Reform agi- 
tation, and my surprise at the real delight he showed in 
this proof of general regard from his fellow- advocates. 
But now, ambitious or not, he found the career flung 
open, all barriers thrown down, and was forced to enter, 
all the world at his back crushing him in. 

He was, naturally, appointed Lord Advocate (political 
president of Scotland), had to get shoved into Parliament 
- — some vacancy created for him by the great Whigs — 
" Malton in Yorkshire " the place, and was whirled away 
to London and public life ; age now about fifty-six and 
health bad. I remember in his correspondence considera- 
ble misgivings and gloomy forecastings about all this, 
which in my inexperience and the general exultation then 
prevalent I had treated with far less regard than they 
merited. He found them too true ; and what I, as a by- 
stander, could not quite see till long after, that his worst 
expectations were realised. The exciting agitated scene 
abroad and at home, the unwholesome hours, bad air, 
noisy hubbub of St. Stephen's, and at home the incessant 
press of crowds, and of business mostly new to him, 



LORD JEFFREY. 305 

rendered his life completely miserable, and gradually- 
broke down his health altogether. He had some momen- 
tary glows of exultation, and dashed off triumphant bits 
of letters to my wife, w^hich I remember we both of us 
thought somewhat juvenile and idyllic (especially one 
written in the House of Commons library, just after his 
" great speech," and ** with the cheers of that House still 
ringing in my ears"), and which neither of us pitied withal 
to the due degree. For there was in the heart of all of 
them — even of that "' great speech " one — a deep misery 
traceable ; a feeling how blessed the old peace and rest 
would be, and that peace and rest were now fled far 
away ! We laughed considerably at this huge hurlyburly, 
comparable in certain features to a huge Sorcerers' Sab- 
bath, prosperously dancing itself out in the distance ; and 
little knew how lucky we were, instead of unlucky (as 
perhaps was sometimes one's idea in perverse moments) 
to have no concern with it except as spectators in the 
shilling gallery or the two-shilling ! 

About the middle of August, as elsewhere marked, I 
set off for London with *' Sartor Resartus " in my pocket. 
I found Jeffrey much preoccupied and bothered, but will- 
ing to assist me with Bookseller Murray and the like, and 
studious to be cheerful. He lived in Jermyn Street, Avife 
and daughter with him, in lodgings at ii/. a week, in 
melancholy contrast to the beautiful tenements and per- 
fect equipments they had left in the north. On the ground 
floor, in a room of fair size, was a kind of secretary, a 
blear-eyed, tacit Scotch figure, standing or sitting at a 
desk with many papers. This room seemed also to be 



306 LORD JEFFREY. 

ante-room or waiting-room, into which I was once or twice 
shown if important company was upstairs. The secre- 
tary never spoke ; hardly even answered if spoken to, ex- 
cept by an ambiguous smile or sardonic grin. He seemed 
a shrewd enough fellow, and to stick faithfully by his own 
trade. Upstairs on the first floor were the apartments of 
the family ; Lord Advocate's bedroom the back portion 
of the sitting-room, shut off from it merely by a folding 
door. If I called in the morning, in quest perhaps of let- 
ters (though I don't recollect much troubling him in that 
way), I would find the family still at breakfast, ten A.M. or 
later ; and have seen poor Jeffrey emerge in flowered 
dressing-gown, with a most boiled and suffering expres- 
sion of face, like one who had slept miserably, and now 
awoke mainly to paltry misery and bother ; poor official 
man ! " I am made a mere post office of ! " I heard him 
once grumble, after tearing up several packets, not one 
of which was internally for himself. 

Later in the day you were apt to find certain Scotch 
people dangling about, on business or otherwise, Ruther- 
ford the advocate a frequent figure, I never asked or 
guessed on what errand ; he, florid fat and joyous, his old 
chieftain very lean and dreary. On the whole I saw little 
of the latter in those first weeks, and might have recognised 
more than I did, how to me he strove always to be cheer- 
ful and obliging, though himself so heavy-laden and in- 
ternally wretched. One day he did my brother John, for 
my sake (or perhaps for hers still more) an easy service 
which proved very important. A Dr. Baron, of Glou- 
cester, had called one day, and incidentally noticed that 



LORD JEFFREY. Z07 

" the Lady Clare " (a great though most unfortunate and 
at length professedly valetudinary lady) " wanted a travel- 
ling physician, being bound forthwith to Rome." Jeffrey, 
the same day, on my calling, asked " Wouldn't it suit your 
brother ? " and in a day or two the thing was completely 
settled, and John, to his and our great satisfaction (I still 
remember him on the coach-box in Regent Circus), under 
way into his new Roman locality, and what proved his 
new career. My darling had arrived before this last step 
of the process, and was much obliged by what her little 
•* Duke" had done. Duke was the name we called him 
by ; for a foolish reason connected with one of Macaulay's 
swaggering articles in the "Edinburgh Review," and an 
insolent response to it in " Blackwood." '' Horsewhipped 
by a duke," had said Macaulay of his victim in the ar- 
ticle : " Duke ! quotha ! " answered Blackwood ; " such 
a set of dukes ! " and hinted that " Duke Macaulay " and 
"the Duke of Craigcrook " were extremely unheraldic 
dignitaries both of them ! 

By my Jeannie too had come for John and me the last 
note we ever had from our father. It was full of the pro- 
foundest sorrow (now that I recall it) "drawing nigh to 
the gates of death : " which none of us regarded as other 
than common dispiritment, and the weak chagrin of old 
age. Ah me, how blind, how indifferent are all of us to 
sorrows that lie remote from us, and in a sphere not ours ! 
In vain did our brave old father, sinking in the black gulfs 
of eternity, seek even to convince us that he was sinking. 
Alone, left alone, with only a tremulous and fitful, though 
eternal star of hope, he had to front that adventure for 



308 LORD JEFFREY. 

himself — with an awe-struck imagination of it such as few 
or none of men now know. More valiant soul I have 
never seen : nor one to whom death was more unspeak- 
ably " the King of Terrors." Death, and the Judgment 
Bar of the Almighty following it, may well be terrible to 
the bravest. Death with nothi7ig of that kind following 
it, one readily enough finds cases where that is insignifi- 
cant to very mean and silly natures. Within three months 
my father was suddenly gone. I might have noticed some- 
thing of what the old Scotch people used to call/<?j/ in his 
last parting with me (though I did not then so read it, nor 
do superstitiously now, but only understand it and the 
superstition) : it is visible in Frederick Wilhelm's Ultima- 
tum too. But nothing of all that belongs to this place ! 

My Jeannie had brought us silhouettes of all the faces 
she had found at Scotsbrig ; one of them (and I find they 
are all still at Chelsea), is the only outward shadow of my 
father's face now left me/ Thanks to her for this also, 
the dear and ever helpful one ! 

After her arrival, and our settlement in the Miles's 
lodgings (Ampton Street, Gray's Inn Lane ; a place I will 
go to see if I return), Jeffrey's appearances were more fre- 
quent and satisfactory. Very often in the afternoon he 
came to call, for her sake mainly I believe, though mostly 
I was there too ; I perceive now his little visits to that un- 
fashionable place were probably the golden item of his 
bad and troublous day ; poor official man begirt with 
empty botheration ! I heard gradually that he was not 
reckoned " successful " in public life ; that as Lord Advo- 
' Engraved and prefixed to Vol. I. — Editor. 



LORD JEFFREY. 3^9 

cate, the Scotch with cheir multifarious business found 
him irritable, impatient (which I don't wonder at), that 
his " great speech " with '* the cheers of that House," 
etc. etc. had been a Parliamentary failure, rather un- 
adapted to the place, and what was itself very mortifying, 
that the reporters had complained of his ** Scotch accent" 
to excuse tliemselves for various omissions they had 
made ! His accent was indeed, singular, but it was by no 
means Scotch : at his first going to Oxford (where he did 
not stay long), he had peremptorily crushed down his 
Scotch (which he privately had in store in excellent con- 
dition to the very end of his life, producible with highly 
ludicrous effect on occasion), and adopted, instead, a 
strange, swift, sharp-sounding, fitful modulation, part of 
it pungent, quasi-latrant, other parts of it cooing, bantery, 
lovingly quizzical, which no charms of his fine ringing 
voice (metallic tenor of sweet tone), and of his vivacious 
rapid looks, and pretty little attitudes and gestures, could 
altogether reconcile you to, but in which he persisted 
through good report and bad. Old Braxey (Macqueen, 
Lord Braxfield), a sad old cynic, on whom Jeffrey used to 
set me laughing often enough, was commonly reported to 
have said, on hearing Jeffrey again after that Oxford so- 
journ, " The laddie has clean tint his Scotch, and found 
nae English ! " which was an exaggerative reading of the 
fact, his vovv'els and syllables being elaborately English 
(or English and more, e.g. " heppy," " my Lud," etc. etc.) 
while the tune which he sang them to was all his own. 

There was not much of interest in what the Lord Ad- 
vocate brought to us in Ampton Street ; but there was 



3IO LORD JEFFREY. 

something friendly and homelike in his manners there ; 
and a kind of interest and sympathy in the extra-official 
fact of his seeking temporary shelter in that obscure re- 
treat. How he found his way thither I know not (per- 
haps in a cab, if quite lost in his azimuth) ; but I have 
more than once led him back through Lincoln's Inn 
Fields, launched him safe in Long Acre with 'nothing but 
Leicester Square and Piccadilly ahead ; and he never 
once could find his way home ; wandered about, and 
would discover at last that he had got into Lincoln's 
Inn Fields again. He used to tell us sometimes of min- 
isterial things, not often, nor ever to the kindling of any 
admiration in either of us ; how Lord Althorp would 
bluffly say etc. etc. (some very dull piece of bluff can- 
dour) ; more sparingly what the aspects and likelihoods 
were, in which my too Radical humour but little sympa- 
thised. He was often unwell, hidden for a week at Wim- 
bledon Park (Lord Althorp's, and then a beautiful se- 
cluded place), for quiet and rural air. We seldom called 
at Jermyn Street ; but did once in a damp clammy even- 
ing, which I still fondly recollect ; ah me ! Another ditto 
evening I recollect being there myself. We were sitting 
in homely ease by the fire, ourselves four, I the only visi- 
tor, when the house-bell rang, and something that sounded 
like *' Mr. Fisher " (Wishaw it should have been), was an- 
nounced as waiting downstairs ; the emotion about whom 
on Mrs. Jeffrey's part, and her agitated industry in sort- 
ing the apartment in the few seconds still available struck 
me somewhat all the more when "Mr. Fisher" himself 
waddled in, a puffy, thickset, vulgar little dump of an old 



LORD JEFFREY. 31 X 

man, whose manners and talk, (talk was of cholera then 
threatened as imminent or almost come), struck me as 
very cool, but far enough from admirable. By the first 
good chance I took myself away ; learned by and by that 
this had been a ** Mr. Wishaw,'' whose name I had some- 
times heard of (in connection with Mungo Park's Travels 
or the Uke) ; and long afterwards, on asking old Sterling 
who or what this Wishaw specially was, " He's a damned 
old humbug ; dines at Holland House," answered Sterling 
readily. Nothing real in him but the stomach and the ef- 
frontery to fill it, according to his version : which was all 
the history I ever had of the poor man ; whom I never 
heard of more, nor saw, except that one time. 

We were at first rather surprised that Jeffrey did not 
introduce me to some of his grand literary figures, or try 
in some way to be of help to one for whom he evidently 
had a value. The explanation I think partly was, that I 
myself expressed no trace of aspiration that way ; that his 
grand literary or other figures were clearly by no means 
so adorable to the rustic hopelessly Germanized soul as 
an introducer of one might have wished ; and chiefly that 
in fact Jeffrey did not consort with literary or other grand 
people, but only with W^ishaws and bores in this bad 
time ; that it was practically the very worst of times for 
him, and that he was himself so heartily miserable as to 
think me and his other fellow-creatures happy in compari- 
son, and to have no care left to bestow on us. I never 
doubted his real wish to help me should an opportunity 
c^er, and while it did not, we had no want of him, but 
plenty of society, of resources, outlooks, and interests 



312 LORD JEFFREY. 

Otherwise. Truly one might have pitied him this his in- 
flux of unexpected dignities, as I hope I in silence loyally 
sometimes did. So beautiful and radiant a little soul, 
plunged on the sudden into such a mother of (gilt) de?,d 
dogs ! But it is often so ; and many an envied man fares 
like that mythic Irishman who had resolved on treating 
himself to a sedan chair ; and on whom the mischievous 
chairmen giving one another the wink, left the bottom 
open and ran away with him, to the sorrow of his poor 
shins. ''And that's your sedan chairs!" said the Irish 
gentleman, paying his shilling and satisfied to finish the 
experiment. 

In March or the end of February I set to writing 
*' Johnson ; " and having found a steady table (what fet- 
tling in that poor room, and how kind and beautiful she 
was to me !) I wrote it by her side for most part, pushing 
my way through the mud elements, with a certain glow 
of victory now and then. This finished, this and other 
objects and arrangements (Jeffrey much in abeyance to 
judge by my memory now so blank), we made our 
adieus (Irving, Badams, Mill, Leigh Hunt, who was a new 
acquaintance, but an interesting), and by Birmingham, 
Liverpool, Scotsbrig, with incidents all fresh in mind to 
me just now, arrived safely home well pleased with our 
London sojourn, and feeling our poor life to a certain de- 
gree made richer by it. Ah me ! '' so strange, so sad, 
the days that are no more ! " 

Jeffrey's correspondence continued brisk as ever, but 
it was now chiefly to her address ; and I regarded it little, 
feehng, as she too did, that it greatly wanted practicality, 



LORD JEFFREY. SU 

and amounted mainly to a flourish of fine words, and the 
pleasant expenditure now and then of an idle hour in in- 
tervals of worry. My time, with little ** Goethe " papers 
aad excerptings (Das Mahrchen etc. etc.), printing of 
"Sartor" piecemeal in "Fraser," and London corre- 
spondings, went more prosperously than heretofore. Had 
there been good servants procurable, as there were 7iot, 
one might almost have called it a happy time, this at 
Craigenputtoch, and it might have lasted longer ; but per- 
manent we both silently felt it could not be, nor even very 
lasting as matters stood. I think it must have been the 
latter part of next year, 1833, when Jeffrey's correspond- 
ence with me sputtered out into something of sudden life 
again ; and something so unlucky that it proved to be es- 
sentially death instead ! The case was this : we heard 
copiously in the newspapers that the Edinburgh people in 
a meritorious scientific spirit were about remodelling their 
old Astronomical Observatory ; and at length that they 
had brought it to the proper pitch of real equipment, and 
that nothing now was wanting but a fit observer to make 
it scientifically useful and notable. I had hardly even 
looked through a telescope, but I had good strength in 
mathematics, in astronomy, and did not doubt but I could 
soon be at home in such an enterprise if I fairly entered 
on it. My old enthusiasms, I felt too, were not dead, 
though so long asleep. We were eagerly desirous of some 
humblest anchorage, in the finance way, among our fellow- 
creatures ; my heart's desire, for many years past and 
coming, was always to find any honest employment by 
which one might regularly gain one's daily bread ! Often 



3H LORD JEFFREY. • 

long after this (while hopelessly writing the '' French Rev- 
olution," for example, hopelessly of money or any other 
success from it), I thought my case so tragically hard : 
*' could learn to do honestly so many things, nearly all the 
things I have ever seen done, from the making of shoes 
up to the engineering of canals, architecture of mansions 
as palatial as you liked, and perhaps to still higher things 
of the physical or spiritual kind ; would moreover toil so 
loyally to do my task right, not wrong, and am forbidden 
to try any of them ; see the practical world closed against 
me as with brazen doors, and must stand here and perish 
idle ! '' 

In a word I had got into considerable spirits about 
that astronomical employment, fancied myself in the silent 
midnight interrogating the eternal stars etc. with some- 
thing of real geniality — in addition to financial considera- 
tions ; and, after a few days, in the light friendly tone, 
with modesty and brevity, applying to my Lord Advocate 
for his countenance as the first or preliminary step of pro- 
cedure, or perhaps it was virtually in his own appointment 
— or perhaps again (for I quite forget), I wrote rather as 
enquiring what he would think of me in reference to it ? 
The poor bit of letter still seems to me unexceptionable, and 
the answer was prompt and surprising ! Almost, or quite 
by return of post, I got not a flat refusal only, but an 
angry vehement, almost shrill-sounding and scolding one, 
as if it had been a crime and an insolence in the like of me 
to think of such a thing. Thing was intended, as I soon 
found, for his old Jermyn Street secretary (my taciturn 
friend with the blear eyes) ; and it was indeed a plain in- 



LORD JEFFREY. 315 

convenience that the Hke of me should apply for it, but 
not a crime or an insolence by any means. ** The like of 
me?" thought I, and my provocation quickly subsided 
into contempt. For I had in Edinburgh a kind of mathe- 
matical reputation withal, and could have expected votes 
far stronger than Jeffrey's on that subject. But I perceived 
the thing to be settled, believed withal that the poor sec- 
retary, though blear-eyed when I last saw him, would do 
well enough, as in effect I understood he did ; that his 
master might have reasons of his own for wishing a pro- 
visionary settlement to the poor man ; and that in short I 
was an outsider and had nothing to say to all that. By 
the first post I accordingly answered, in the old light style, 
thanking briefly for at least the swift despatch, affirming 
the maxim bis dat qui cito dat even in case of refusal, and 
good-humouredly enough leaving the matter to rest on its 
own basis. Jeffrey returned to it, evidently somewhat in 
repentant mood (his tone had really been splenetic sput- 
tery and improper, poor worried man) ; but I took no no- 
tice, and only marked for my own private behoof, what 
exiguous resource of practical help for me lay in that 
quarter, and how the economical and useful, there as else- 
where, would always override the sentimental and orna- 
mental. 

I had internally no kind of anger against my would-be 
generous friend. Had not he after all a kind of gratuitous 
regard for me ; perhaps as much as I for him ? Nor was 
there a diminution of respect, perhaps only a clearer view 
how little respect there had been ! My own poor task 
was abundantly serious, my posture in it solitary ; and I 



3l6 LORD JEFFREY. 

felt that silence would be fittest. .Then and subsequently 
I exchanged one or two little notes of business with Jef- 
frey, but this of late autumn 1833 was the last of our sen- 
timental passages ; and may be said to have closed what 
of correspondence we had in the friendly or effusive strain. 
For several years more he continued corresponding with 
my wife ; and had I think to the end a kind of lurking 
regard to us willing to show itself; but our own struggle 
with the world was now become stern and grim, not fitly 
to be interrupted by these theoretic flourishes of epistolary 
trumpeting : and (towards the finale of " French Revolu- 
tion," if I recollect), my dearest also gave him up, and 
nearly altogether ceased corresponding. 

What a finger of Providence once more was this of the 
Edinburgh Observatory ; to which, had Jeffrey assented, 
I should certainly have gone rejoicing. These things 
really strike one's heart. The good Lord Advocate, who 
really was pitiable and miserably ill off in his eminent 
position, showed visible embarrassment at sight of me (in 
1834), come to settle in London without furtherance asked 
or given ; and, indeed, on other occasions, seemed to 
recollect the Astronomical catastrophe in a way which 
touched me, and was of generous origin or indication. 
He was quitting his Lord Advocateship, and returning 
home to old courses and habits, a solidly wise resolu- 
tion. . He always assiduously called on us in his subse- 
quent visits to London ; and we had our kind thoughts, 
our pleasant reminiscences and loyal pities of the once 
brilliant man and friend ; but he was now practically be- 
come little or nothing to us, and had withdrawn as it were 



LORD JEFFREY. 317 

to the Sphere of the past. I have chanced to meet him 
in a London party ; found him curiously exotic. I used 
punctually to call if passing through Edinburgh ; some 
recollection I have of an evening, perhaps a night, at 
Craigcrook, pleasantly hospitable, with Empson (son-in- 
law) there, and talk about Dickens, etc. Jeffrey was now 
a judge, and giving great satisfaction in that office ; " sel- 
dom a better judge," said everybody. His health was 
weak and age advancing, but he had escaped his old 
London miseries, like a sailor from shipwreck, and might 
now be accounted a lucky man again. The last time I 
saw him was on my return from Glen Truin in Inverness- 
shire or Perthshire, and my Ashburton visit there (in 1^49 
or 50). He was then at least for the time withdrawn from 
judging, and was reported very weak in health. His 
wife and he sauntering for a little exercise on the shore at 
Newhaven, had stumbled over some cable and both of 
them fallen and hurt themselves, his wife so ill that I did 
not see her at all. Jeffrey I did see after some delay, and 
we talked and strolled slowly some hours together; but 
there was no longer stay possible, such the evident dis- 
tress and embarrassment Craigcrook was in. I had got 
breakfast on very kind terms from Mrs. Empson, with 
husband, and three or four children (of strange Edinburgh 
type). Jeffrey himself on coming down was very kind to 
me, but sadly weak ; much worn away in body, and in 
mind more thin and sensitive than ever. He talked a 
good deal, distantly alluding once to our changed courses, 
in a friendly (not a very dexterous way), was throughout 
friendly, good, but tremulous, thin, almost affecting, in 



3l8 LORD JEFFREY. 

contrast with old times ; grown Lunar now, not Solar any 
more ! He took me, baggage and all, in his carriage to 
the railway station, Mrs. Empson escorting, and there 
said farewell, for the last time as it proved. Going to the 
Grange some three or four months after this, I accident- 
ally heard from some newspaper or miscellaneous fellow- 
passenger, as the news of the morning, that Lord Jeffrey 
in Edinburgh was dead. Dull and heavy, somewhere in 
the Basingstoke localities, the tidings fell on me, awaken- 
ing frozen memories not a few. He had died I afterwards 
heard with great constancy and firmness ; lifted his finger 
as if in cheerful encouragement amid the lamenting loved 
ones, and silently passed away. After that autumn morn- 
ing at Craigcrook I have never seen one of those friendly 
souls, not even the place itself again. A few months 
afterwards Mrs. Jeffrey followed her husband ; in a year 
or two at Haileybury (some East India College where he 
had an office or presidency), Empson died, ** correcting 
proof sheets of the * Edinburgh Review,' " as appears, 
'* while waiting daily for death ; " a most quiet editorial 
procedure which I have often thought of! Craigcrook 
was sold ; Mrs. Empson with her children vanished 
mournfully into the dumb distance ; and ail was over 
there, and a life scene once so bright for us and others 
had ended, and was gone, like a dream. 

Jeffrey was perhaps at the height of his reputation 
about l8i6; his ** Edinburgh Review " a kind of Delphic 
oracle and voice of the inspired for great majorities of 
what is called the "intelligent public," and himself re- 
garded universally as a man of consummate penetration 



LORD JEFFREY. 319 

and the facile princeps in the department he had chosen 
to cultivate and practise. In the half-century that has 
followed, what a change in all this ! the fine gold become 
dim to such a degree, and the Trismegistus hardly now 
regarded as a Megas by anyone, or by the generality re- 
membered at all. He may be said to have begun the 
rash reckless style of criticising everything in heaven and 
earth by appeal to Molieres maid ; *' Do you like it? " 
" Dotit you like it ? " a style which in hands more and 
more inferior to that sound-hearted old lady and him, has 
since grown gradually to such immeasurable length among 
us ; and he himself is one of the first that suffers by it. 
If praise and blame are to be perfected, not in the mouth 
of Moliere's maid only but in that of mischievous pre- 
cocious babes and sucklings, you will arrive at singular 
judgments by degrees ! Jeffrey was by no means the su- 
preme in criticism or in anything else ; but it is certain 
there has no critic appeared among us since who was 
worth naming beside him ; and his influence for good and 
for evil in literature and otherwise has been very great. 
Democracy, the gradual uprise and rule in all things of 
roaring million-headed unreflecting, darkly suffering dark- 
ly sinning "■ Demos," come to call its old superiors to 
account at its maddest of tribunals ; nothing in my time 
has so forwarded all this as Jeffrey and his once famous 
" Edinburgh Review." 

He was not deep enough, pious or reverent enough, 
to have been great in literature ; but he was a man intrin- 
sically of veracity ; said nothing without meaning it to 
some considerable degree, had the quickest perceptions, 



320 LORD JEFFREY. 

excellent practical discernment of what lay before him ; 
was in earnest too, though not *' dreadfully in earnest ; " in 
short was well fitted to set forth that *' Edinburgh Review " 
(at the dull opening of our now so tumultuous century), 
and become coryphaeus of his generation in the waste, 
wide-spreading and incalculable course appointed it among 
the centuries ! I used to find in him a finer talent than any 
he has evidenced in writing. This was chiefly when he 
got to speak Scotch, and gave me anecdotes of old Scotch 
Braxfields and vernacular (often enough but not always 
cynical) curiosities of that type ; which he did with a 
greatness of gusto quite pecuHar to the topic, with a fine 
and deep sense of humour, of real comic mirth, much be- 
yond what was noticeable in him otherwise ; not to speak 
of the perfection of the mimicry, which itself was some- 
thing. I used to think to myself, ** Here is a man whom 
they have kneaded into the shape of an Edinburgh re- 
viewer, and clothed the soul of in Whig formulas and blue 
and yellow ; but he might have been a beautiful Goldoni 
too, or some thing better in that kind, and have given us 
comedies and aerial pictures true and poetic of human life 
in a far other way ! " There was something of Voltaire in 
him, something even in bodily features ; those bright- 
beaming, swift and piercing hazel eyes, with their accom- 
paniment of rapid keen expression in the other lineaments 
of face, resembled one's notion of Voltaire ; and in the 
voice too there was a fine half-plangent kind of metallic 
ringing tone which used to remind me of what I fancied 
Voltaire's voice might have been : '' voix sombre et ma- 
jestueuse," Duvernet calls it. The culture and respective 



LORD JEFFREY. 321 

natal scenery of the two men had been very different ; 
nor was their magnitude of faculty anything like the same, 
had their respective kinds of it been much more identical 
than they were. You could not define Jeffrey to have 
been more than a potential Voltaire ; say " Scotch Vol- 
taire " ; with about as much reason (which was not very 
much) as they used in Edinburgh to call old Playfair the 
"■ Scotch D'Alembert." Our Voltaire too, whatever else 
might be said of him, was at least worth a large multiple 
of our D'Alembert ! A beautiful little man the former of 
these, and a bright island to me and to mine in the sea 
of things, of whom it is now again mournful and painful 
to take farewell. 

[Finished at Mentone, this Saturday January 19, 1867 ; 
day bright as June (while all from London to Avignon 
seems to be choked under snow and frost) ; other con- 
ditions, especially the internal, not good, but baddish or 
bad.] 

21 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

" In the ancient county town of Haddington, July 14, 1801, 
there was born to a lately wedded pair, not natives of the 
place but already reckoned among the best class of people 
there, a little daughter whom they named Jane Baillie 
Welsh, and whose subsequent and final name (her own 
common signature for many years), was Jane Welsh Car- 
lyle, and now so stands, now that she is mine in death 
only, on her and her father's tombstone in the Abbey 
Kirk of that town. July 14, 1 801 ; I was then in my 
sixth year, far away in every sense, now near and infi- 
nitely concerned, trying doubtfully after some three years* 
sad cunctation, if there is anything that I can profitably 
put on record of her altogether bright beneficent and 
modest little hfe, and her, as my final task in this world." 
These are the words in which Mr. Carlyle commenced 
an intended sketch of his wife's history, three years after 
she had been taken from him ; but finding the effort too 
distressing, he passed over her own letters, with notes and 
recollections which he had written down immediately 
after her death, directing me as I have already stated ' 
either to destroy them, or arrange and publish them, as I 
might think good. I told him afterwards that before I 

• See Preface. 



326 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

could write any biography either of Mrs. Carlyle or him- 
self, I thought that these notes ought to be printed in the 
shape in which he had left them, being adjusted merely 
into some kind of order. He still left me to my own dis- 
cretion ; on myself therefore the responsibility rests en- 
tirely for their publication. The latter part of the narra- 
tive flows on consecutively ; the beginning is irregular 
from the conditions under which Mr. Carlyle was writing. 
He had requested Miss Geraldine Jewsbury, who had 
been his wife's most intimate friend, to tell him any bio- 
graphical anecdotes which she could remember to have 
heard from Mrs. Carlyle's lips. On these anecdotes, 
when Miss Jewsbury gave him as much as she was able 
to give, Mr. Carlyle made his own observations, but he 
left them undigested ; still for the most part remaining in 
Miss Jewsbury's words ; and in the same words I think it 
best that they shall appear here, as material which may be 
used hereafter in some record more completely organised, 
but for the present serving to make intelligible what Mr. 
Carlyle has to say about them. 



IN MEMORIAM JANE WELSH CARLYLE.^ 

Ob. April 21, 1866. 

She told me that once, when she was a very little girl, there was 
going to be a dinner-party at home, and she was left alone with some 
tempting custards, ranged in their glasses upon a stand. She stood 
looking at them, and the thought '' What would be the consequence 
if I should eat one of them ? " came into her mind. A whimsical 

' Described by Mr. Carlyle as Geraldine's Mythic Jottings. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 32/ 

sense of the dismay it would cause took hold of her ; she thought of 
it again, and scarcely knowing what she was about, she put forth 
her hand, and — took a little from the top of each ! She was dis- 
covered ; the sentence upon her was, to eat all the remaining cus- 
tards, and to hear the company told the reason why there were 
none for them ! The poor child hated custards for a long time 
afterwards. 

THE BUBBLY JOCK. 

On her road to school, when a very small child, she had to pass 
a gate where a horrid turkey-cock was generally standing. He al- 
ways ran up to her, gobbling and looking very hideous and alarm- 
ing. It frightened her at first a good deal ; and she dreaded having 
to pass the place ; but after a little time she hated the thought of 
living in fear. The next time she passed the gate several labourers 
and boys were near, who seemed to enjoy the thought of the turkey 
running at her. She gathered herself together and made up her 
mind. The turkey ran at her as usual, gobbling and swelling; she 
suddenly darted at him and seized him by the throat and swung him 
round ! The men clapped their hands, and shouted ''Well done, 
little Jeannie Welsh ! " and the Bubbly Jock never molested her 
again. 

LEARNING LATIN. 

She was anxious to learn lessons like a boy; and, when a very 
little thing, she asked her father to let her " learn Latin like a boy." 
Her mother did not wish her to learn so much ; her father always 
tried to push her forwards ; there was a division of opinion on the 
subject. Jeannie went to one of the town scholars in Haddington 
and made him teach her a noun of the first declension {"■ Penna, a 
pen," I think it was). Armed with this, she watched her opportu- 
nity ; instead of going to bed, she crept under the table, and was 
concealed by the cover. In a pause of conversation, a little voice 
was heard, ^' Penna, a pen ; penncs, of a pen ; " etc., and as there 
was a pause of surprise, she crept out, and went up to her father 



328 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

saying, " I want to learn Latin ; please let me be a boy." Of 
course she had her own way in the matter. 

SCHOOL AT HADDINGTON. 

Boys and girls went to the same school ; they were in separate 
rooms, except for Arithmetic and Algebra. Jeannie was the best of 
the girls at Algebra. Of course she had many devoted slaves among 
the boys ; one of them especially taught her, and helped her all he 
knew ; but he was quite a poor boy, whilst Jeannie was one of the 
gentry of the place ; but she felt no difficulty, and they were great 
friends. She was fond of doing everything difficult that boys did. 
There was one particularly dangerous feat, to which the boys dared 
each other ; it was to walk on a very narrow ledge on the parapet of 
the bridge overhanging the water ; the ledge went in an arch, and 
the height was considerable. One fine morning Jeannie got up early 
and went to the N ungate Bridge ; she lay doWn on her face and 
crawled from' one end of the bridge to the other, to the imminent 
risk of either breaking her neck or drowning. 

One day in the boys' school-room, one of the boys said some^ 
thing to displease her. She lifted her hand, doubled it, and hit him 
hard ; his nose began to bleed, and in the midst of the scuffle the 
master* came in. He saw the traces of the fray, and said in an angry 
voice, "You know, boys, I have forbidden you to fight in school, 
and have promised that I would flog the next. Who has been fight- 
ing this time ? " Nobody spoke ; and the master grew angry, and 
threatened tawse all round unless the culprit were given up. Of 
course no boy would tell of a girl, so there was a pause ; in the 
midst of it, Jeannie looked up and said, "Please, I gave that black 
eye." The master tried to look grave, and pursed up his mouth ; 
but the boy was big, and Jeannie was little ; so, instead of the tawse 
he burst out laughing and told her she was '' a little deevil," and had 
no business there, and to go her ways back to the girls. 

Her friendship with her schoolfellow-teacher came to an untimely 
end. An aunt who came on a visit saw her standing by a stile with 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 329 

him, and a book between them. She was scolded, and desired not 
to keep his company. This made her very sorry, for she knew how 
good he was to her ; but she never had a notion of disobedience in 
any matter small or great. She did not know how to tell him or to 
explain ; she thought it shame to tell him he was not thought good 
enough, so she determined he should imagine it a fit of caprice, and 
from that day she never spoke to him or took the least notice ; she 
thought a sudden cessation would pain him less than a gradual cold- 
ness. Years and years afterwards, going back on a visit to Had- 
dington, when she was a middle-aged woman, and he was a man 
married and doing well in the world, she saw him again, and then, 
for the first time, told him the explanation. 

She was always anxious to work hard, and would sit up half the 
night over her lessons. One day she had been greatly perplexed by 
a problem in Euclid ; she could not solve it. At last she went to 
bed ; and in a dream got up and did it, and went to bed again. In 
the morning she had no consciousness of her dream ; but on looking 
at her slate, there was the problem solved. 

She was afraid of sleeping too much, and used to tie a weight to 
one of her ankles that she might awake. Her mother discovered it ; 
and her father forbade her to rise before five o'clock. She was a 
most healthy little thing then ; only she did her best to ruin her 
health, not knowing what she did. She always would push every- 
thing to its extreme to find out if possible the ultimate consequence. 
One day her mother was ill, and a bag of ice had to be applied to 
her head. Jeannie wanted to know the sensation, and took an op- 
portunity when no one saw her to get hold of the bag, and put it on 
her own head, and kept it on till she was found lying on the ground 
insensible. 

She made great progress in Latin, and was in Virgil when nine 
years old. She always loved her doll ; but when she got into Virgil 
she thought it shame to care for a doll. On her tenth birthday she 
built a funeral pile of lead pencils and sticks of cinnamon, and 
poured some sort of perfume over all, to represent a funeral pile. 



L 



330 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

She then recited the speech of Dido, stabbed her doll and let out all 
the sawdust ; after which she consumed her to ashes, and then burst 
into a passion of tears. 

HER APPEARANCE IN GIRLHOOD. 

As a child she was remarkable for her large black eyes with their 
long curved lashes. As a girl she was extremely pretty, — a graceful 
and beautifully formed figure, upright and supple, — a delicate com- 
plexion of creamy white with a pale rose tint in the cheeks, lovely 
eyes full of fire and softness, and with great depths of meaning. Her 
head was finely formed, with a noble arch, and a broad forehead. 
Her other features were not regular ; but they did not prevent her 
conveying all the impression of being beautiful. Her voice was 
clear, and full of subtle intonations and capable of great variety of 
expression. She had it under full control. She danced with much 
grace ; and she was a good musician. She was ingenious in all 
works that required dexterity of hand ; she could draw and paint, 
and she was a good carpenter. She could do anything well to which 
she chose to give herself. She was fond of logic, — too much so ; 
and she had a keen clear incisive faculty of seeing through things, 
and hating all that was make-believe or pretentious. She had good 
sense that amounted to genius. She loved to learn, and she culti- 
vated all her faculties to the utmost of her power. She was always 
witty, with a gift for narration ; — in a word she was fascinating and 
everybody fell in love with her. A relative of hers told me that 
every man who spoke to her for five minutes felt impelled to make 
her an offer of marriage ! From which it resulted that a great many 
men were made unhappy. She seemed born " for the destruction 
of mankind." Another person told me that she was " the most 
beautiful starry-looking creature that could be imagined," with a 
peculiar grace of manner and motion that was more charming than 
beauty. She had a great quantity of very fine silky black hair, and 
she always had a natural taste for dress. The first thing I ever 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 331 

heard about her was that she dressed well, — an excellent gift for a 
woman. 

Her mother was a beautiful woman, and as charming as her 
daughter, though not so clever. She had the gift of dressing well 
also. Genifls is profitable for all things, and it saves expense. 
Once her mother was going to some grand fete, and she wanted her 
dress to be something specially beautiful. She did not want to 
spend money. Jeannie was entrusted with a secret mission to 
gather ivy-leaves and trails of ivy of different kinds and sizes, also 
mosses of various kinds, and was enjoined to silence. Mrs. Welsh 
arranged these round her dress, and the moss formed a beautiful 
embossed trimming and the ivy made a graceful scrollwork ; the 
effect was lovely ; nobody could imagine of what the trimming was 
composed, but it was generally supposed to be a French trimming of 
the latest fashion and of fabulous expense. 

She always spoke of her mother with deep affection and great 
admiration. She said she was so noble and generous that no one 
ever came near her without being the better. She used to make 
beautiful presents by saving upon herself, — she economised upon 
herself to be generous to others ; and no one ever served her in the 
least without experiencing her generosity. She was almost as 
charming and as much adored as her daughter. 

Of her father she always spoke with reverence ; he was the only 
person who had any real influence over her. But, however wilful or 
indulged she might be, obedience to her parents — unquestioning and 
absolute — lay at the foundation of her life. She was accustomed to 
say that this habit of obedience to her parents was her salvation 
through life, — that she owed all that was of value in her character to 
this habit as the foundation. Her father, from what she told me, 
was a man of strong and noble character, — very true and hating all 
that was false. She always spoke of any praise he gave her as of a 
precious possession. She loved him with a deep reverence ; and 
she never spoke of him except to friends whom she valued. It was 
the highest token of her regard when she told anyone about her 



332 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

father. She told me that once he was summoned to go a sudden 
journey to see a patient ; and he took her with him. It was the 
greatest favour and pleasure she had ever had. They travelled at 
night, and were to start for their return by a very early hour in the i 
morning. She used to speak of this journey as something that made* 
her perfectly happy ; and during that journey, her father told her that 
her conduct and character satisfied him. It was not often he praised 
her ; and this unreserved flow of communication was very precious 
to her. Whilst he went to the sick person, she was sent to bed un- 
til it should be time to return. She had his watch that she might 
know the time. When the chaise came round, the landlady brought 
her some tea ; but she was in such haste not to keep him waiting 
that she forgot the watch ; and they had to return several miles to 
fetch it ! This was the last time she was with her father ; a few 
days afterwards he fell ill of typhus fever, and would not allow her 
to come into the room. She made her way once to him, and he 
sent her away. He died of this illness ; and it was the very greatest 
sorrow she ever experienced. She always relapsed into a deep 
silence for some time after speaking of her father. \Not very cor- 
rect. T. C.J 

After her father's death they \^^ they,^^ no/] left Haddington, and 
went to live at Temp/and, near Thornhill, in Dumfriesshire. It was 
a country house, standing in its own grounds, prettily laid out. The 
house has been described to me as furnished with a certain elegant 
thrift which gave it a great charm. I do not know how old she was 
when her father died,^ but she was one with whom years did not sig- 
nify, they conveyed no meaning as to what she was. Before she was 
fourteen she wrote a tragedy in five acts, which was greatly admired 
and wondered at ; but she never wrote another. She used to speak 
of it '' as just an explosion." I don't know what the title was ; she 
never told me. 

She had many ardent lovers, and she owned that some of them 

^ Eighteen, just gone. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 333 

had reason to complain. I think it highly probable that M flirting 
were a capital crime, she would have been in danger of being hanged 
many times over. She told me one story that showed a good deal of 
character : — There was a young man who was very much in love, 
and I am afraid he had had reason to hope she cared for him : and 
she only liked him. She refused him decidedly when he proposed ; 
but he tried to turn her from her decision, which showed how little 
he understood her ; for her ivill was very steadfast through life. She 
refused him peremptorily this time. He then fell ill, and took to his 
bed, and his mother was very miserable about her son. She was a 
widow, and had but the one. At last he wrote her another letter, in 
which he declared that unless she would marry him, he would kill 
himself. He was in such distraction that it was a very likely thing 
for him to do. Her mother was very angry indeed, and reproached 
her bitterly. She was very sorry for the mischief she had done, and 
took to her bed, and made herself ill with crying. The old servant, 
Betty, kept imploring her to say just one word to save the young 
man's mother from her misery. But though she felt horribly guilty, 
she was not going to be forced or frightened into anything. She 
took up the letter once more, which she said was very moving, but a 
slight point struck her ; and she put down the letter, saying to her 
mother, '' You need not be frightened, he won't kill himself at all ; 
look here, he has scratched out one word to substitute another. A 
man intending anything desperate would not have stopped to scratch 
out a word, he would have put his pen through it, or left it ! " That 
was very sagacious, but the poor young man was very ill, and the 
doctor brought a bad report of him to the house. She suddenly 
said, '' We must go away, go away for some time ; he will get well 
when we are gone." It was as she had said it would be ; her going 
, away set his mind at rest, and he began to recover. In the end he 
* married somebody else, and what became of him I forget, though I 
think she told me more about him. 

There was another man whom she had allowed to fall in love, and 
never tried to hinder him, though she refused to marry him. After 



334 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

many years she saw him again. He was then an elderly man ; had 
made a fortune, and stood high as a county gentleman. He was 
happily married, and the father of a family. But one day he was 
driving her somewhere, and he slackened the pace to a walk and 
said : " I once thought I would have broken my heart about you, but 
I think my attachment to you was the best thing that ever happened 
to me : it made me a better man. It is a part of my life that stands 
out by itself and belongs to nothing else. I have heard of you from 
time to time, and I know what a brilliant lot yours has been, and I 
have felt glad that you were in your rightful place, and I felt glad 
that I had suffered for your sake, and I have sometimes thought 
that if I had known I would not have tried to turn you into any 
other path." This, as well as I can render it, is the sense of what 
he said gravely and gently, and I admired it very much when she 
told me : but it seems to me that it was much better as she told it 
to me. Nobody could help loving her, and nobody but was the bet- 
ter for doing so. She had the gift of calling forth the best qualities 
that were in people. 

I don't know at what period she knew Irving, but he loved her, 
and wrote letters and poetry (very true and touching) : but there 
had been some vague understanding with another person, not a 
definite engagement, and she insisted that he must keep to it and 
not go back from what had once been spoken. There had been just 
then some trial, and a great scandal about a Scotch minister who 
had broken an engagement of marriage : and she could not bear 
that the shadow of any similar reproach should be cast on him. 
Whether if she had cared for him very much she could or would 
have insisted on such punctilious honour, she did not know herself ; 
but anyhow that is what she did. After Irving's marriage, years 
afterwards, there was not much intercourse between them ; the 
whole course of his life had changed. 

I do not know in what year she married, nor anything connected 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 335 

with her marriage. 1 believe that she brought no money or very 
little at her marriage. Her father had left everything to her, but she 
made it over to her mother, and only had what her mother gave her. 
Of course people thought she was making a dreadfully bad match ; 
they only saw the outside of the thing ; but she had faith in her own 
insight. Long afterwards, when the world began to admire her 
husband, at the time he delivered the " Lectures on Hero Wor- 
ship," she gave a little half-scornful laugh, and said " they tell 
me things as if they were new that I found out years ago." She 
knew the power of help and sympathy that lay in her ; and she knew 
she had strength to stand the struggle and pause before he was 
recognised. She told me that she resolved that he should never 
write for money, only when he wished it, when he had a message in 
his heart to deliver, and she determined that she would make what- 
ever money he gave her answer for all needful purposes ; and she 
was ever faithful to this resolve. She bent her faculties to econom- 
ical problems, and she managed so well that comfort was never 
absent from her house, and no one looking on could have guessed 
whether they were rich or poor. Until she married, she had never 
minded household things ; but she took them up when necessary, 
and accomplished them as she accomplished everything else she 
undertook, well and gracefully. Whatever she had to do she did it 
with a peculiar personal grace that gave a charm to the most 
prosaic details. No one who in later years saw her lying on the 
sofa in broken health, and languor, would guess the amount of ener- 
getic hard work she had done in her life. She could do everything 
and anything, from mending the Venetian blinds to making picture- 
frames or trimming a dress. Her judgment in all literary matters 
was thoroughly good ; she could get to the very core of a thing, and 
her insight w-as like witchcraft. 

Some of her stories about her servants in the early times were- 
very amusing, but she could make a story about a broom-handle 
and make it entertaining. Here are some things she told me about 
their residence at Craigenputtoch. 



33^ JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

At first on their marriage they Uved in a small pretty house in 
Edinburgh called " Comley Bank." Whilst there her first experi- 
ence of the difficulties of housekeeping began. She had never been 
accustomed to anything of the kind ; but Mr. Carlyle was obliged 
to be very careful in diet. She learned to make bread, partly from 
recollecting how she had seen an old servant set to work ; and 
she used to say that the first time she attempted brown bread, 
it was with awe. She mixed the dough and saw it rise ; and 
then she put it into the oven, and sat down to watch the oven- 
door with feelings like Benvenuto Cellini's when he watched 
his Perseus put into the furnace. She did not feel too sure 
what it would come out ! But it came out a beautiful crusty loaf, 
very light and sweet; and proud of it she was. The first time she 
tried a pudding, she went into the kitchen and locked the door on 
herself, having got the servant out of the road. It was to be a suet 
pudding — not just a common suet pudding, but something special — 
and it was good, being made with care by weight and measure with 
exactness. Whilst they were in Edinburgh they knew everybody 
worth knowing ; Lord Jeffrey was a great admirer of hers, and an 
old friend ; Chalmers, Guthrie, and many others. But Mr. Car- 
lyle's health and work needed perfect quietness and absolute soli- 
tude. They went to live at the end of two years at Craigenputtoch 
— a lonely farmhouse belonging to Mrs. Welsh, her mother. A 
house was attached to the farm, beside the regular farmhouse. The 
farm was let ; and Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle lived in the house, which 
was separated from the farm-yard and buildings by a yard. A 
garden and out-buildings were attached to it. They had a cow, 
and a horse, and poultry. They were fourteen miles from Dum- 
fries, which was the nearest town. The country was uninhabited 
for miles round, being all moorland, with rocks, and a high steep 
green hill behind the house. She used to say that the stillness was 
almost awful, and that when she walked out she could hear the 
sheep nibbling the grass, and they used to look at her with innocent 
wonder. The letters came in once a week, which was as often as 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 337 

they sent into Dumfries. All she needed had to be sent for there or 
done without. One day she had desired the farm-servant to bring 
her a bottle of yeast. The weather was very hot. The man came 
back looking scared ; and without the yeast. He said doggedly 
' that he would do anything lawful for her ; but he begged she would 
never ask him to fetch such an uncanny thing again, for it had just 
worked and worked till it flew away with the bottle ! When asked 
wdiere it was, he replied " it had a' gane into the ditch, and he had 
left it there ! " 

Lord Jeffrey and his family came out twice to visit her ; expect- 
ing, as he said, to find that she had hanged herself upon a door-nail. 
But she did no such thing. It was undoubtedly a great strain upon 
her nerves from which she never entirely recovered ; but she lived 
in the solitude cheerfully and willingly for six years. It was a much 
greater trial than it sounds at first ; for Mr. Carlyle was engrossed 
in his work, and had to give himself up to it entirely. It was work 
and thought with which he had to wrestle with all his might to bring 
out the truths he felt, and to give them due utterance. It was his 
life that his work required, and it was his life that he gave, and she 
gave her life too, which alone made such life possible for him. All 
those who have been strengthened by Mr. Carlyle's written words — 
and they have been wells of life to more than have been numbered 
— owe to her a debt of gratitude no less than to him. If she had not 
devoted her life to him, he could not have worked; and if she had 
let the care for money weigh on him he could not have given his best 
strength to teach. Hers was no holiday task of pleasant companion- 
ship ; she had to live beside him in silence that the people in the 
world might profit by his full strength and receive his message. She 
lived to see his work completed, and to see him recognized in full for 
what he is, and for w^hat he has done. 

Sometimes she could not send to Dumfries for butcher's meat ; 
and then she was reduced to her poultry. She had a peculiar 
breed of very long-legged hens, and she used to go into the yard 
amongst them with a long stick and point out those that were to 

22 



33^ JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

be killed, feeling, she said, like Fouquier Tinville pricking down his 
victims. 

One hard winter her servant, Grace, asked leave to go home to 
see her parents ; there was some sort of a fair held in her village. 
She went and was to return at night. The weather was bad, and she 
did not return. The next morning there was nothing for it but for 
her to get up to light' the fires and prepare breakfast. The house 
had beautiful and rather elaborate steel grates ; it seemed a pity to 
let them rust, so she cleaned them carefully, and then looked round 
for wood to kindle the fire. There was none in the house ; it all lay 
in a little outhouse across the yard. On trying to open the door, she 
found it was frozen beyond her power to open it, so Mr. Carlyle had 
to be roused ; it took all his strength, and when opened a drift of 
snow six feet high fell into the hall ! Mr. Carlyle had to make a path 
to the wood-house, and bring over a supply of wood and coal ; after 
which he left her to her own resources. 

The fire at length made, the breakfast had to be prepared ; but 
it had to be raised from the foundation. The bread had to be made, 
the butter to be churned, and the coffee ground. All was at last ac- 
complished, and the breakfast was successful! After breakfast she 
went about the work of the house, as there was no chance of the ser- 
vant being able to return. The work fell into its natural routine. 
Mr Carlyle always kept a supply of wood ready ; he cut it, and piled 
it ready for her use inside the house ; and he fetched the water, and 
did things she had not the strength to do. The poor cow was her 
greatest perplexity. She could continue to get hay down to feed it, 
but she had never in her life milked a cow. The first day the servant 
of the farmer's wife, who lived at the end of the yard, milked it for 
her willingly, but the next day Mrs. Carlyle heard the poor cow 
making an uncomfortable noise ; it had not been milked. She went 
herself to the byre, and took the pail and sat down on the milking- 
stool and began to try to milk the cow. It was not at first easy ; but 
at last she had the delight of hearing the milk trickle into the can. 
She said she felt quite proud of her success ; and talked to the cow 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 339 

as though it were a human creature. The snow continued to He thick 
and heavy on the ground, and it was impossible for her maid to re- 
turn. Mrs. Carlyle got on easily with all the housework, and kept 
the whole place bright and clean except the large kitchen or house 
place, which grew to need scouring very much. At length she took 
courage to attack it. Filling up two large pans of hot water, she 
knelt down and began to scrub ; having made a clean space round 
the large arm-chair by the fireside, she called Mr. Carlyle and in- 
stalled him with his pipe to watch her progress. He regarded her 
beneficently, and gave her from time to time words of encourage- 
ment. Half the large floor had been successfully cleansed, and she 
felt anxious of making a good ending, when she heard a gurgling 
sound. For a moment or two she took no notice, but it increased 
and there was a sound of something faihng upon the fire, and instant- 
ly a great black thick stream came down the chimney, pouring like 
a flood along the floor, taking precisely the lately cleaned portion 
first in its course, and extinguishing the fire. It was too much; she 
burst into tears. The large fire, made up to heat the water, had 
melted the snow on the top of the chimney, it came down mingling 
with the soot, and worked destruction to the kitchen floor. All that 
could be done was to dry up the flood. She had no heart to recom- 
mence her task. She rekindled the fire and got tea ready. That 
same night her maid came back, having done the impossible to get 
home. She clasped Mrs. Carlyle in her arms, crying and laughing, 
saying " Oh, my dear mistress, my dear mistress, I dreamed ye were 
deed ! " 

During their residence at Craigenputtoch, she had a good little 
horse, called '' Harry," on which she sometimes rode long distances. 
She was an excellent and fearless horsewoman, and went about like 
the women used to do before carriages were invented. One day she 
received news that Lord Jeffrey and his family, with some visitors, 
were coming. The letter only arrived the day they were expected 
(for letters only came in one day in the week). She mounted 



340 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

" Harry" and galloped off to Dumfries to get what was needed and 
galloped back, and was all ready and dressed to receive her visitors 
with no trace of her thirty mile ride except the charming history she 
made of it. She said that '' Harry" understood all was needed of 
him. 

She had a long and somewhat anxious ride at another time. Mr. 
Carlyle had gone to London, leaving her to finish winding up affairs 
at Craigenputtoch and to follow him. The last day came. She got 
the money out of the bank at Dumfries, dined with a friend, and 
mounted her horse to ride to Ecclefechan, where she was to stay for 
a day or two. Whether she paid no attention to the road or did not 
know it I don't know ; but she lost her way : and at dusk found her- 
self entering Dumfries from the other side, having made a circuit. 
She alighted at the friend's house where she had dined, to give her 
horse a rest. She had some tea herself, and then mounted again to 
proceed on her journey, fearing that those to whom she was going 
would be alarmed if she did not appear. This time she made sure 
she was on the right tack. It was growing dusk, and at a joining 
of two roads she came upon a party of men half-tipsy, commg from 
a fair. They accosted her, and asked where she was going, and 
would she come along with them ? She was rather frightened, for 
she had a good deal of money about her, so she imitated a broad 
country dialect, and said their road was not hers, and that she had 
^' a gey piece to ride before she got to Annan." She whipped her 
horse, and took the other road, thinking she could easily return to 
the right track ; but she had again lost her way and, seeing a house 
with a light in the lower story, she rode up the avenue which led 
to it. Some women-servants had got up early, or rather late at 
night, to begin their washing. She knocked at the window. At 
first they thought it was one of their sweethearts ; but when they 
saw a lady on a horse they thought it a ghost. After a while she got 
them to listen to her, and when she told them her tale they were 
vehement in their sympathy, and would have had her come in to re- 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 341 

fresh herself. They gave her a cup of their tea, and one of them 
came with her to the gate, and set her face towards the right road. 
She had actually come back to within a mile of Dumfries once more! 
The church clocks struck twelve as she set out a third time, and it 
was after two o'clock in the morning before she arrived, dead tired, 
she and her horse too, at Ecclefechan ; where however she had long 
since been given up. The inmates had gone to bed, and it was long 
before she could make them hear. After a day or two of repose, she 
proceeded to join Mr. Carlyle in London. At first they lived in 
lodgings with some people who were very kind to them and became 
much attached to her. They looked upon her as a superior being, 
of another order, to themselves. The children were brought up to 
think of her as a sort of fairy lady. One day, a great many years 
afterwards, when I had come to live in London, it was my birthday, 
and we resolved to celebrate it " by doing something ; " and at last 
we settled that she should take me to see the daughter of the people 
she used to lodge with, who had been an affectionate attendant 
upon her, and who was now very well married, and an extremely 
happy woman. Mrs. Carlyle said it was a good omen to go and see 
** a happy woman" on such a day! So she and I, and her dog 
*' Nero," who accompanied her wherever she went, set off to Dalston 
where the '' happy woman" lived. I forget her name, except that 
she was called '■''Elizas It was washing day, and the husband was 
absent ; but I remember a pleasant-looking kind woman, who gave 
us a nice tea, and rejoiced over Mrs. Carlyle, and said she had 
brought up her children in the hope of seeing her some day. She 
lived in a house in a row, with little gardens before them. We saw 
the children, who were like others ; and we went home by omnibus; 
and we had enjoyed our little outing ; and Mrs. Carlyle gave me a 
pretty lace collar, and Bohemian-glass vase, which is still unbroken. 

I end these *' stories told by herself," not because there are no 
more. They give some slight indication of the courage and noble- 
ness and fine qualities which lay in her who is gone. Very few 



342 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

women so truly great come into the world at all ; and no two like her 
at the same time. Those who were her friends will only go on feel- 
ing their loss and their sorrow more and more every day of their 
own lives. G. E. J. 

Chelsea, May 20, 1866. 



So far Miss Jewsbury. Mr. Carlyle now continues : 
Few or none of these narratives are correct in details, 
but there is a certain mythical truth in all or most of 
them. That of young lovers, especially that of flirting, is 
much exaggerated. If "flirt" means one who tries to 
inspire love without feeling it, I do not think she ever was 
a flirt; but she was very charming, full of grave clear in- 
sight, playful humour, and also of honest dignity and 
pride ; and not a few young fools of her own, and perhaps 
a slightly better station, made offers to her which some- 
times to their high temporary grief and astonishment were 
decisively rejected. The most serious-looking of those 
affairs was that of George Rennie, nephew of the first 
Engineer Rennie, a clever, decisive, ambitious, but quite 
?/;2melodious young fellow, whom we knew afterwards 
here as sculptor, as M.P. for a while, finally as retired 
Governor of the Falkland Islands, in which latter charac- 
ter he died here seven or eight years ago. She knew 
him thoroughly, had never loved him, but respected vari- 
ous qualities in him, and naturally had some peculiar 
interest in him to the last. In his final time he used to 
come pretty often down to us here, and was well worth 
talking to on his Falkland or other experiences ; a man 
of sternly sound common sense (so called), of strict vera- 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 343 

city, who much contemned imbecility, falsity, or nonsense 
wherever met with ; had swallowed manfully his many 
bitter disappointments, and silently awaited death itself 
for the last year or more (as I could notice), with a fine 
honest stoicism always complete. My poor Jane hurried 
to his house, and was there for three days zealously assist- 
ing the widow. 

The wooer who would needs die for want of success, 
was a Fyfe M.D., an extremely conceited limited, strutting 
little creature, who well deserved all he got or more. 
The end of him had something of tragedy in it, but is not 
worth recording. 

Dods is the "peasant schoolfellow's" name, about 
seven or eight years her senior, son of a nurseryman, now 
rich abundantly, banker, etc. etc., and an honest kindly, 
though clumsy prosaic man. 

The story of her being taken as a child to drive with 
her father has some truth in it, but consists of two stories 
rolled into one. Child of seven or eight " with watch 
forgotten," was to the Press Inn (then a noted place, and 
to her an ever-memorable expedition beside a father almost 
her divinity) ; but drive second, almost still more memora- 
ble, was for an afternoon or several hours as a young girl 
of eighteen, over some district of her father's duties. She 
waiting in the carriage unnoticed, while he made his visits. 
The usually tacit man, tacit especially about his bright 
daughter's gifts and merits, took to talking with her that 
day in a style quite new ; told her she w^as a good girl, 
capable of being useful and precious to him and the circle 
she would live in ; that she must summon her upmost 



344 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

judgment and seriousness to choose her path, and be what 
he expected of her ; that he did not think she had yet 
seen the life partner that would be worthy of her — in short 
that he expected her to be wise as well as good-looking 
and good ; all this in a tone and manner which filled her 
poor little heart with surprise, and a kind of sacred joy, 
coming from the man she of all men revered. 

Often she told me about this, for it was her last talk 
with him. On the morrow, perhaps that evening, cer- 
tainly within a day or two, he caught from some poor old 
woman patient a typhus fever, which under injudicious 
treatment killed him in three or four days (September 
1 819), and drowned the world for her in the very black- 
ness of darkness. In effect it was her first sorrow, and 
her greatest of all. It broke her health for the next two 
or three years, and in a sense almost broke her heart. A 
father so mourned and loved I have never seen ; to the 
end of her life his title even to me was "■ he " and " him ; " 
not above twice or thrice, quite in late years, did she ever 
mention (and then in a quite slow tone), *' my father;" 
nay, I have a kind of notion (beautiful to me and sad 
exceedingly), she was never as happy again, after that 
sunniest youth of hers, as in the last eighteen months, and 
especially the last two weeks of her life, when after wild 
rain deluges and black tempests many, the sun shone 
forth again for another's sake with full mild brightness, 
taking sweet farewell. Oh, it is beautiful to me, and oh, 
it is humbling and it is sad ! Where was my Jeannie's 
peer in this world ? and she fell to me, and I could not 
screen her from the bitterest distresses ! God pity and 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 345 

forgive me. My own burden, too, might have broken a 
stronger back, had not she been so loyal and loving. 

The Geraldine accounts of her childhood are substan- 
tially correct, but without the light melodious clearness 
and charm of a fairy tale all true, which my lost one used 
to give them in talking to me. She was fond of talking 
about her childhood ; nowhere in the world did I ever 
hear of one more beautiful, all sunny to her and to me, to 
our last years together. 

That of running on the parapet of the Nungate Bridge 
(John Knox's old suburb), I recollect well ; that of the 
boy with the bloody nose ; many adventures skating and 
leaping ; that of Penna, pennae from below the table is 
already in print through Mrs. Oliphant's ** Life of Irving." 
In all things she strove to " be a boy " in education ; and 
yet by natural guidance never ceased to be the prettiest 
and gracefullest of little girls, full of intelligence, of ve- 
racity, vivacity, and bright curiosity ; she went into all 
manner of shops and workshops that were accessible, 
eager to see and understand what was going on. One 
morning, perhaps in her third or fourth year, she went 
into the shop of a barber on the opposite side of the 
street, back from which by a narrow entrance was her own 
nice, elegant, quiet home. Barber's shop was empty ; 
my Jeannie went in silently, sate down on a bench at the 
wall, old barber giving her a kind glance, but no word. 
Presently a customer came in, was soaped and lathered in 
silence mainly or altogether, was getting diligently shaved, 
my bonny little bird as attentive as possible, and all in 
perfect silence. Customer at length said in a pause of the 



345 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

razor, "How is John so and so now?" " He's deed " 
(dead), replied barber in a rough hollow voice, and 
instantly pushed on with business again. The bright little 
child burst into tears and hurried out. This she told nie 
not half a year ago. 

Her first school teacher was Edward Irving, who also 
gave her private lessons in Latin etc., and became an 
intimate of her family. It was from him (probably in 
i8i8}, that I first heard of her father and her, some casual 
mention, the loving and reverential tone of which had 
struck me. Of the father he spoke always as of one of 
the wisest, truest, and most dignified of men. Of her as 
a paragon of gifted young girls, far enough from me both, 
and objects of distant reverence and unattainable longing 
at that time ! The father, whom I never saw, died next 
year. Her I must have seen first I think in June 1821. 
Sight for ever memorable to me. I looked up at the 
windows of the old room, in the desolate moonlight of my 
last visit to Haddington ^ five weeks ago come Wednesday 
next : and the old summer dusk, and that bright pair of 
eyes enquiringly fixed on me (as I noticed for a moment) 
came up clear as yesterday, all drowned in woes and death. 
Her second teacher (Irving's successor) was a Rev. James 
Brown, who died in India, whom also I slightly knew. 
The school I believe was, and is, at the western end of 
the Nungate Bridge, and grew famed in the neighbour- 
hood by Irving's new methods and managements (adopted 
as far as might be by Brown) ; a short furlong or so along 
paved streets from her father's house. Thither daily at 

^ Mrs. Carlyle's funeral. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 347 

an early hour (perhaps eight A.M. in summer), might be 
seen my Httle Jeannie tripping nimbly and daintily along, 
her little satchel in hand, dressed by her mother (who had 
a great talent that way) in tasteful simplicity ; neat bit of 
pelisse (light blue sometimes), fastened with black belt, 
dainty httle cap, perhaps little beaverkin (with flap turned 
up), and I think one at least with modest little plume in 
it. Fill that figure with electric intellect, ditto love and 
generous vivacity of all kinds, where in nature will you 
find a prettier ? 

At home was opulence without waste, elegance, good 
sense, silent practical affection and manly wisdom, from 
threshold to roof-tree, no paltriness or unveracity admit- 
ted into it. I often told her how very beautiful her child- 
hood was to me, so authentic-looking actual, in her 
charming naive and humorous way of telling, and that 
she must have been the prettiest little Jenny Spinner 
(Scotch name for a long-winged, long-legged, extremely 
bright and airy insect) that was dancing in the summer 
rays in her time. More enviable lot than all this was I 
cannot imagine to myself in any house high or low, in the 
higher and highest still less than in the other kind. 

Three or four child anecdotes I will mark as ready at 
this time. 

Father and mother returning from some visit (prob- 
ably to Nithsdale) along with her (age say four), at the 
Black Bull, Edinburgh, and were ordering dinner. Wait- 
er, rather solemn personage, enquired, "And what will 
little missy eat ? " "A roasted bumm bee" (humming 
or field bee) answered little missy. 



348 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

*' Mamma, wine makes cosy !" said the little natural- 
ist once at home (year before perhaps) while sipping a 
drop of wine mamma had given her. 

One of the prettiest stories, was of the child's first 
ball, " Dancing School Ball," her first public appearance 
as it were on the theatre of the world. Of this, in the 
daintiest style of kind mockery, I often heard, and have 
the general image still vivid ; but have lost the express 
details, or rather, in my ignorance of such things, never 
completely understood the details. How the evening was 
so great ; all the higher public, especially the maternal 
or paternal sections of it, to see the children dance ; and 
Jeannie Welsh, then about six, had been selected to per- 
form somo. pas setil beautiful and difficult, the jewel of the 
evening, and was privately anxious in her little heart to 
do it well ; how she was dressed to perfection, with ele- 
gance, with simplicity, and at the due hour was carried 
over in a clothes-basket (streets being muddy and no car- 
riage), and landed safe, pretty silks and pumps uninjured. 
Through the ball everything went well and smoothly, 
nothing to be noted till the pas sent came. My httle 
woman (with a look that I can still fancy) appeared upon 
the scene, stood waiting for the music ; music began, but 
also, alas, it was the wrong music, impossible to dance 
'OiXdX pas seiil \.o it. She shook her little head, looked or 
made some sign of distress. Music ceased, took counsel, 
scraped ; began again ; again wrong ; hopelessly, flatly 
impossible. Beautiful little Jane, alone against the world, 
forsaken by the music but not by her presence of mind, 
plucked up her little skirt, flung it over her head, and 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 349 

curtseying in that veiled manner, withdrew from the ad- 
venture amidst general applause. 

The last of my anecdotes is not easily intelligible ex- 
cept to myself. Old Walter Welsh, her maternal grand- 
father, w^as a most picturesque peculiar, generous-hearted, 
hot-tempered abrupt and impatient old man. I guess she 
might be about six, and was with her mother on a visit ; 
I know not whether at Capelgill (Moffat Water) or at 
Strathmilligan. Old Walter, who was of few words 
though of very lively thought and insight, had a burr in 
pronouncing his r, and spoke in the old style generally. 
He had taken little Jeannie out to ride on a quiet pony ; 
very pleasant winding ride, and at length when far 
enough, old Walter said, *'Now we will go back by so 
and so, etc., to vary the scene." Home at dinner, the 
company asked he'r, ''Where did you ride to. Pen?" 
(Pen was her little name there, from paternal grand- 
father's house, Penfillan, to distinguish her from the other 
Welshes of Walter's household.) "We rode to so, then 
to sOy' answered she punctually ; *' then from so returned 
by so, to vah-chry the shane ! " At which I suppose the 
old man himself burst into his cheeriest laugh at the 
mimicry of tiny little Pen. *' Mamma, oh mamma, don't 
exposie me," exclaimed she once, not yet got quite the 
length of speaking, when her mother for some kind pur- 
pose was searching under her clothes. 

But I intend to put down something about her parent- 
age now, and what of reminiscence must live with me on 
that head. 

John Welsh, farmer, of Penfillan, near Thornhill, 



350 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

Nithsdale, for the greater part of his life, was born I 
beheve at Craigenputtoch, December 9, 1757 ; and was 
sole heir of that place, and of many ancestors there ; my 
wife's paternal grandfather, of whom she had many pretty 
things to report, in her pleasant interesting way ; genu- 
ine affection blending so beautifully with perfect candour, 
and with arch recognition of whatever was, comically or 
otherwise, singular in the subject matter. Her father's 
name was also John ; which from of old had specially 
been that of the laird, or of his first-born, as her father 
was. This is one of the probabilities they used to quote 
in claiming to come from John Knox's youngest daughter 
and her husband, the once famous John Welsh, minister 
of Ayr etc. A better probability perhaps is the topo- 
graphical one that Craigenputtoch, which, by site and 
watershed would belong to Galloway, is still part of 
Dumfriesshire, and did apparently form part Collieston, 
fertile little farm still extant, which probably was an im- 
portant estate when the antique ''John Welsh's father" 
had it in Knox's day: to which Collieston, Craigenput- 
toch, as moorland, extending from the head of the Glen- 
essland valley, and a two miles farther southward (quite 
over the slope and down to Orr, the next river), does 
seem to have been an appendage. My Jeannie cared 
little or nothing about these genealogies, but seeing them 
interest me, took some interest in them. Within the last 
three months {a pj'opos of a new life of the famed John 
Welsh), she mentioned to me some to me new, and still 
livelier spark of likelihood, which her ''Uncle Robert" 
(an expert Edinburgh lawyer) had derived from reading 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 35 [ 

the old Craigenputtoch law-papers. What this new 
"spark " of light on the matter was (quite forgotten by 
me at the time, and looking " new ") I in vain strive to 
recall ; and have again forgotten it (swallowed in the sad 
Edinburgh hurlyburlics of '' three months ago," which 
have now had such an issue !) To my present judgment 
there is really good likelihood of the genealogy, and like- 
hhood all going that way ; but no certainty attained or 
perhaps ever attainable. That " famed John Welsh" lies 
buried (since the end of James I.'s reign) in some church- 
yard of Eastern London, name of it known, but nothing 
more. His grandson was minister of Erncray ("Iron- 
gray " they please to spell it) near by, in Clavers's bloody 
time ; and there all certainty ends. . . . By her mother's 
mother, who was a Baillie, of somewhat noted kindred in 
Biggar country, my Jeannie was further said to be de- 
scended from "Sir William Wallace" (the great); but 
this seemed to rest on nothing but air and vague fireside 
rumour of obsolete date, and she herself, I think, except 
perhaps in quizzical allusion, never spoke of it to me at 
all. Edward Irving once did (1822 or so) in his half- 
laughing Grandison way, as we three sat together talk- 
ing. " From Wallace and from Knox," said he, with a 
wave of the hands : *' there's a Scottish pedigree for you ! " 
The good Irving : so guileless, loyal always, and so hop- 
ing and so generous. 

My wife's grandfather, I can still recollect, died Sep- 
tember 20, 1823, aged near sixty-six ; I was at Kinnaird 
(BuUer's in Perthshire), and had it in a letter from her: 
letters from her were almost the sole light-points in my 



352 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

dreary miseries there (fruit of miserable health mainly, 
and of a future blank and barred to me, as I felt). Trust- 
fully she gave me details ; how he was sixty-three ; ' hair 
still raven black, only within a year eyebrows had grown 
quite white ; which had so softened and sweetened the 
look of his bright glancing black eyes, etc. etc. A still 
grief lay in the dear letter, too, and much affection and 
respect for her old grandfather just gone. Sweet and 
soft to me to look back upon ; and very sad now, from 
the threshold of our own grave. My bonnie darling ! I 
shall follow thee very soon, and then — ! 

Grandfather's youngest years had been passed at 
Craigenputtoch ; mother had been left a widow there, 
and could not bear to part with him ; elder sisters there 
were, he the only boy. Jane always thought him to 
have fine faculty, a beautiful clearness, decision, and 
integrity of character ; but all this had grown up in soli- 
tude and vacancy, under the silent skies on the wild 
moors for most part. She sometimes spoke of his (and 
her) ulterior ancestors; ** several blackguards among 
them," her old grandfather used to say, **but not one 
blockhead that I heard of! " Of one, flourishing in 1745, 
there is a story still current among the country people 
thereabouts ; how, though this laird of Craigenputtoch 
had not himself gone at all into the Rebellion, he re- 
ceived with his best welcome certain other lairds or gen- 
tlemen of his acquaintance who had, and who were now 
flying for their life ; kept them there, as in a seclusion 
lonelier almost than any other in Scotland ; heard time- 

' Near sixty-six in fact. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 353 

fully that dragoons were coming for them ; shot them 
thereupon instantly away by various well-contrived routes 
and equipments : and waited his dragoon guests as if 
nothing were wrong. " Such and such men here with 
you, aren't they, you — !" said they. '* Truly they 
were, till three hours ago ; and they are rebels, say 
you ? Fie, the villains, had I but known or dreamt 
of that ! But come, let us chase immediately ; once 
across the Orr yonder (and the swamps on this side, 
which look green enough from here), you find firm road, 
and will soon catch the dogs ! " Welsh mounted his gal- 
loway, undertook to guide the dragoons through that 
swamp or " bottom " (still a place that needed guiding 
in our time, though there did come at last a " solid road 
and bridge"). Welsh, trotting along on his light gallo- 
way, guided the dragoons in such way that their heavy 
animals sank mostly or altogether in the treacherous ele- 
ment, safe only for a native galloway and man ; and with 
much pretended lamentation, seeing them provided with 
work that would last till darkness had fallen, rode his 
ways again. I believe this was true in substance, but 
never heard any of the saved rebels named. Maxwells 
etc., who are of Roman-Catholic Jacobite type, abound 
in those parts : a Maxwell, I think, is feudal superior of 
Craigenputtoqh. This Welsh, I gather, must have been 
grandfather of my wife's grandfather. She had strange 
stories of his wives (three in succession, married perhaps 
all, especially the second and third, for money), and how 
he kept the last of them, a decrepit ill-natured creature, 

invisible in some corner of his house, and used gravely to 
23 



354 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

introduce visitors to her " gown and bonnet " hanging on 
a stick as " Mrs. Welsh III." Him his grandson doubt- 
less ranked among the " blackguard " section of ancestry ; 
I suppose his immediate heir may have died shortly after 
him, and was an unexceptionable man. 

In about 1773, friends persuaded the widow of this 
latter that she absolutely must send her boy away for 
some kind of schooling, his age now fourteen, to which 
she sorrowfully consenting, he was despatched to Tynron 
school (notable at that time) about twelve miles over the 
hills Nithsdale way, and consigned to a farmer named 
Hunter> whose kin are now well risen in the world there- 
abouts, and who was thought to be a safe person for 
boarding and supervising the young moorland laird. The 
young laird must have learned well at school, for he wrote 
a fine hand (which I have seen) and had acquired the or- 
dinary elements of country education in a respectable way 
in the course of one year as turned out. Within one 
year, February 16, 1774, these Hunters had married him 
to their eldest girl (about sixteen, four months younger 
than himself), and his schooldays were suddenly com- 
pleted ! This young girl was my Jeannie's grandmother; 
had I think some fourteen children, mostly men (of whom, 
or of whose male posterity, none now survive, except the 
three Edinburgh aunts, youngest of them a month younger 
than my Jane was) ; and thus held the poor laird's face 
considerably to the grindstone all his days ! I have seen 
the grandmother, in her old age and widowhood, a re- 
spectable-looking old person (lived then with her three 
daughters in a house they had purchased at Dumfries) ; 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 355 

silently my woman never much liked her or hers (a palpa- 
bly rather tricky, cunning set these, with a turn for osten- 
tation and hypocrisy in them) ; and was accustomed to 
divide her uncles (not without some ground, as I could 
see) into ** Welshes," and ** Welshes with a cross of Hun- 
ter," traceable oftenest (not ahVays though) in their very 
physiognomy and complexion. They are now all gone ; 
the kindred as good as out, only their works following 
them, talia qiialia ! 

This imprudent marriage reduced the poor young man 
to pecuniary straits (had to sell first Nether Craigenput- 
toch, a minor part, in order to pay his sisters' portion, 
then long years afterwards, in the multitude of his chil- 
dren, Upper Craigenputtoch, or Craigenputtoch Proper; 
to my wife's father this latter sale), and though, being a 
thrifty vigorous and solid manager, he prospered hand- 
somely in his farming, first of Milton, then ditto of Penfil- 
lan, the best thing he could try in the circumstances, and 
got completely above all money difficulties, the same 
" circumstances " kept him all his days a mere *' terrcs fi- 
litis,'' restricted to Nithsdale and his own eyesight (which 
indeed was excellent) for all the knowledge he could get 
of this universe ; and on the whole had made him, such 
the contrast between native vigour of faculty and acciden- 
tal contraction of arena, a singular and even interestingr 
man, a vScottish Nithsdale son of nature ; highly interest- 
ing to his bright young granddaughter, with the clear 
eyesight and valiant true heart like his own, when she 
came to look into him in her childhood and girlhood. He 
was solidly devout, truth's own self in what he said and 



35^ JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

did, had dignity of manners too, in fact a really brave 
sincere and honourable soul (reverent of talent, honesty, 
and sound sense beyond all things), and was silently a 
good deal respected and honourably esteemed (though 
with a grin here and there) in the district where he lived. 
For chief or almost sole intimate he had the neighbour- 
ing (biggish) laird, *' old Hoggan of Waterside," almost 
close by Penfillan, whose peremptory ways and angulari- 
ties of mind and conduct, are still remembered in that re- 
gion sorrowfully and strangely, as his sons, grandsons, 
and now great-grandson, have distinguished themselves 
in the other direction there. It was dehghtful to hear 
my bright one talk of this old grandfather ; so kindly yet 
so playfully, with a vein of fond affection, yet with the 
justest insight. In his last will (owing to Hunterian arti- 
fices and unkind whisperings, as she thought) he had 
omitted her, though her father had been such a second 
father to all the rest :— i,ooo/. apiece might be the share 
of each son and each daughter in this deed of the old 
man's ; and my Jane's name was not found there, as if she 
too had been dead like her beneficent father. Less care 
for the money no creature in the world could have had ; 
but the neglect had sensibly grieved her, though she 
never at all blamed the old man himself, and before long, 
as was visible, had forgiven the suspected Hunterian par- 
ties themselves, ''poor souls, so earnest about their pal- 
try bits of interests, which are the vitallest and highest 
they have ! or perhaps it was some whim of the old man 
himself? Never mind, never mind ! " And so, as I could 
perceive, it actually was abolished in that generous heart, 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 357 

and not there any longer before much time had passed. 
Here are two pictures, a wise and an absurd, two of very 
many she used to give me of loved old grandfather, with 
which surely I may end : 

I. *' Never hire as servant a very poor person's daugh- 
ter or son ; they have seen nothing but confusion, waste, 
and huggermugger, mere want of thrift or method." 
This was a very wise opinion surely. On the other 
hand — 

He was himself a tall man, perhaps six feet or more, 
and stood erect as a column. And he had got gradually 
into his head, supported by such observation as the arena 
of Kier parish and neighbouring localities afforded, the 
astonishing opinion — 

2. That small people, especially short people, were good 
for nothing ; and in fine that a man's bodily stature was a 
correctish sign of his spiritual ! Actually so, and would 
often make new people, aspiring to be acquaintances, 
stand up and be measured, that he might have their 
inches first of all. Nothing could drive this out of him ; 
nothing till he went down once to sit on a jury at Dum- 
fries ; and for pleader to him had Francis Jeffrey, a man 
little above five feet, and evidently the cleverest advocate 
one had ever heard or dreamed of ! Ah me ! these were 
such histories and portrayings as I shall never hear again, 
nor I think did ever hear, for some of the qualities they 
had. 

John Welsh, my wife's father, was born at Craigen- 
puttoch (I now find, which gives the place a new interest 
to me), April 4, 1776, little more than eighteen years 



353 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

younger than his father, or tiian his mother. His first 
three years or so (probably till May 26, 1779, when the 
parents may have moved to Milton in Tynron) must have 
been passed in those solitudes. At Milton he would see 
his poor young sister die — wonted playmate sadly vanish 
from the nevv hearth — and would no doubt have his 
thoughts about it (my own little sister Jenny in a similar 
stage, and my dear mother's tears about her, I can vivid- 
ly remember ; the strangely silent white-sheeted room ; 
white sheeted linen-curtained bed, and small piece of ele- 
vation there, which the joiner was about measuring ; and 
my own outburst into weeping thereupon, I hardly knew 
why, my first passing glance at the spectre Death). 
More we know not of the boy's biography there ; except 
that it seems to have lasted about seven years at Milton ; 
and that, no doubt, he had been for three or four years 
at school there (Tynron school, we may well guess) when 
(1785 or 6) the family shifted with him to Penfillan. There 
probably he spent some four or five years more ; Tynron 
was still his school, to which he could walk ; and where I 
conclude he must have got what Latin and other educa- 
tion he had. Very imperfect he himself, as I have evi- 
dence, considered it ; and in his busiest time he never 
ceased to struggle for improvement of it. Touching to 
know, and how superlatively well, in other far more im- 
portant respects, nature and his own reflections and in- 
spirations had *' educated " him. Better than one of 
.many thousands, as I do perceive ! Closeburn (a school 
still of fame) lay on the other side of Nith River, and 
would be inaccessible to him, though daily visible. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 359 

What year he first went to Edinburgh, or entered the 
University, I do not know ; I think he was first a kind of 
apprentice to a famous Joseph or Charles Bell (father of a 
surgeon still in great practice and renown, though intrin- 
sically stupid, reckoned a sad falling off from his father, 
in my own time) ; and with this famed Bell he was a 
favourite, probably I think attending the classes etc., 
while still learning from Bell. I rather believe he never 
took an M.D. degree; but was, and had to be, content 
with his diploma as surgeon ; very necessary to get out 
of his father's way, and shift for himself in some honest 
form ! Went, I should dimly guess, as assistant to some 
old doctor at Haddington on Bell's recommendation. 
Went first, I clearly find, as Regimental Surgeon, August 
l6, 1796, into the "Perthshire Fencible Cavalry," and 
served there some three years. Carefully tied up and re- 
posited by pious hands (seemingly in 1819), I find three 
old "commissions" on parchment, with their stamps, 
seals, signatures, etc. (Surgeon, August 10, 1796 ; Cor- 
net, September 15, 1796; and Lieutenant, April 5, 1799) 
which testify to this ; after which there could have been 
no " assistantship " with Somers, but purchase and full 
practice at once, marriage itself having followed in 1800, 
the next year after that "Lieutenancy" promotion. I 
know not in what year (say about 1796, his twentieth 
year, my first in this world) Somers finding his assistant 
able for everything, a man fast gaining knowledge, and 
acceptable to all the better public, or to the public alto- 
gether, agreed in a year or two, to demit, withdraw to 
country retirement, and declare his assistant successor, on 



360 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

condition, which soon proved easy and easier, of being paid 
(I know not for how long, possibly for life of self and wife, 
but it did not last long) an annuity of 200/. Of which I 
find trace in that poor account book (year — ) of his ; 
piously preserved, poor solitary relic [no ; several n^ore, 
** commissions," lancet, etc. found by me since (July 28, 
'66)'], by his daughter ever since his death. 

Dr. Welsh's success appears to have been, henceforth 
and formerly, swift and constant ; till, before long, the 
whole sphere or section of life he was placed in had in all 
senses, pecuniary and other, become his own, and there 
remained nothing more to conquer in it, only very much 
to retain by the methods that had acquired it, and to be 
extremely thankful for as an allotment in this world. A 
truly superior man, according to all the evidence I from 
all quarters have. A very valiant man, Edward Irving 
once called him in my hearing. His medical sagacity was 
reckoned at a higher and higher rate, medical and other 
honesty as well ; for it was by no means as a wise physi- 
cian only, but as an honourable exact and quietly digni- 
fied man, punctual, faithful in all points, that he was 
esteemed over the country. It was three years after his 
death when I first came into the circle which had been 
his ; and nowhere have I met with a posthumous reputa- 
tion that seemed to be more unanimous or higher among 
all ranks of men. The brave man himself I never saw ; 
but my poor Jeannie, in her best moments, often said to 
me about this or that, ** Yes, he would have done it so ! " 
*' Ah, he would have liked you ! " as her highest praise. 
" PunctuaHty " Irving described as a thing he much in- 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 361 

sisted on. Many miles daily of riding (three strong horses 
in saddle always, with inventions against frost etc.); he 
had appointed the minute everywhere ; and insisted 
calmly on having it kept by all interested parties, high or 
low. Gravely inflexible where right was concerned ; and 
**' very independent " where mere rank etc. attempted to 
avail upon him. Story of some old valetudinarian Nabal 
of eminence (Nisbet of Dirleton, immensely rich, continu- 
ally cockering himself, and suffering") ; grudging audibly 
once at the many fees he had to pay (from his annual 
30,000/.) : — " Daresay I have to pay you 300/. a year, Dr. 
Welsh ? " — " Nearly or fully that, I should say ; all of it 
accurately for work done." — ** It's a great deal of money, 
though ! " — '' Work not demanded, drain of payment will 
cease of course ; not otherwise ; " answered the doctor, 
and came home with the full understanding that his Dirle- 
ton practice and connection had ended. My Jeannie rec- 
ollected his quiet report of it to mamma and her, with 
that corollary ; however, after some short experience 
(or re-experience of London doctors) Nabal Nisbet (who 
had " butter churned daily for breakfast," as one item of 
expenditure) came back, with the necessary Peccavi ex- 
pressed or understood. 

One anecdote I always remember, of the per contra 
kind. Riding along one day on his multifarious business, 
he noticed a poor wounded partridge fluttering and strug- 
gling about, wing or leg, or both, broken by some sports- 
man's lead. He alighted in his haste, or made the groom 
alight if he had one ; gathered up the poor partridge, 
looped it gently in his handkerchief, brought it home ; 



3^2 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

and, by careful splint and salve and other treatment, had 
it soon on wing again, and sent it forth healed. This in 
so grave and practical a man, had always in it a fine ex- 
pressiveness to me ; she never told it me but once, long 
ago ; and perhaps we never spoke of it again. 

Some time in autumn 1800 (I think) the young Had> 
dington doctor married ; my wife, his first and only child, 
was born July 14 (Bastille-day, as we often called it) 
1 801 ; 64^ years old when she died. The bride was 
Grace Welsh of Capelgill (head of Moffat Water in An- 
nandale) ; her father an opulent store-farmer up there, 
native of Nithsdale ; her mother, a Baillie from Biggar 
region, already deceased. Grace was beautiful, must 
have been : she continued what might be called beauti- 
ful till the very end, in or beyond her sixtieth year. Her 
Welshes were Nithsdale people of good condition, though 
beyond her grandfather and uncles, big farmers in Thorn- 
hill Parish (the Welshes of Morton Mains for I know not 
for what length of time before, nor exactly what after, 
only that it ceased some thirty or perhaps almost fifty 
years ago, in a tragic kind of way) ; I can learn nothing 
certain of them from Rev. Walter of Auchtertool, nor 
from his sister Maggie here, who are of that genealogy, 
children of my mother-in-law's brother John ; concern- 
ing whom perhaps a word afterwards. When the young 
Haddington doctor and his beautiful Grace had first made 
acquaintance I know not ; probably on visits of hers to 
Morton Mains, which is but a short step from Penfillan. 
Acquainted they evidently were, to the degree of mu- 
tually saying, "Be it for life then ; " and, I believe, were 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 363 

and continued deeply attached to one another. Sadder 
widow than my mother-in-law, modestly, delicately, yet 
discernibly was, I have seldom or never seen, and my 
poor Jeannie has told me he had great love of her, though 
obliged to keep it rather secret or undemonstrative, being 
well aware of her too sensitive, fanciful, and capricious 
ways. 

Mrs. Welsh when I first saw her (1822, as dimly ap- 
pears) must have been in the third year of her widow- 
hood. I think, when Irving and I entered, she was sit- 
ting in the room with Benjamin^ and my Jane, but soon 
went away. An air of deep sadness lay on her, and on 
everybody, except on poor dying Benjamin, who affected 
to be very sprightly, though overwhelmed as he must 
have felt himself. His spirit, as I afterwards learned 
from his niece, who did not love him, or feel grateful to 
him, was extraordinary, in the worldly-wise kind.- Mrs. 
Welsh, though beautiful, a tall aquiline figure, of elegant 
carriage and air, was not of an intellectual or specially 
distinguished physiognomy ; and, in her severe costume 
and air, rather repelled me than otherwise at that time. 
A day or so after, next evening perhaps, both Irving and 
I were in her drawing-room, with her daughter and her, 
both very humane to me, especially the former, which I 
noticed with true joy for the moment. I was miserably 
ill in health ; miserable every way more than enough, in 
my lonely imprisonment, such as it was, which lasted 
many years. The drawing-room seemed to me the finest 
apartment I had ever sate or stood in ; in fact it was a 

' Brother of Dr. Welsh. 



364 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

room of large and fine proportions, looking out on a gar- 
den, on more gardens or garden walls and sprinkling of 
trees, across the valley or plain of the Tyne (which lay 
hidden), house quite at the back of the town, facing to- 
wards Lethington etc. the best rooms of it ; and every- 
where bearing stamp of the late owner's solid temper. 
Clean, all of it, as spring water ; solid and correct as well 
as pertinently ornamented ; in the drawing-room, on the 
tables there, perhaps rather a superfluity of elegant whim- 
whams. The summer twilight, I remember, was pouring 
in rich and soft ; I felt as one walking transiently in upper 
spheres, where I had little right even to make transit. Ah 
me ! they did not know of its former tenants when I went 
to the house again in April last. I remember our all 
sitting, another evening, in a little parlor off the dining- 
room (downstairs), and talking a long time ; Irving 
mainly, and bringing out me, the two ladies benevolently 
listening with not much of speech, but the younger with 
a lively apprehension of all meanings and shades of mean- 
ing. Above this parlour I used to sleep, in my visits in 
after years, while the house was still unsold. Mrs. W. 
left it at once, autumn 1826, the instant her Jeannie had 
gone with me ; went to Templand, Nithsdale, to her 
father ; and turned out to have decided never to behold 
Haddington more. 

She was of a most generous, honourable, affectionate 
turn of mind ; had consummate skill in administering a 
household ; a goodish well-tending intellect — something 
of real drollery in it, from which my Jeannie, I thought, 
might have inherited that beautiful lambency and bril- 



.^'" 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 365 

liancy of soft genial humour, which illuminated her per- 
ceptions and discoursings so often to a singular degree, 
like pure soft morning radiance falling upon a perfect 
picture, true to the facts. Indeed, I once said, ** Your 
mother, my dear, has narrowly missed being a woman of 
genius." Which doubtless was reported by and by in a 
quizzical manner, and received with pleasure. For the 
rest, Mrs. W. , as above said, was far too sensitive ;■ her 
beauty, too, had brought flatteries, conceits perhaps ; she 
was very variable of humour, flew off or on upon slight 
reasons, and, as already said, was not easy to live with 
for one wiser than herself, though very easy for one more 
foolish, if especially a touch of hypocrisy and perfect ad- 
miration were superadded. The married life at Hadding- 
ton, I always understood, was loyal and happy, sunnier 
than most, but it was so by the husband's softly and 
steadily taking the command, I fancy, and knowing how 
to keep it in a silent and noble manner. Old Penfillan (I 
have heard the three aunts say) reported once, on return- 
ing^from a visit at Haddington, '* He had seen her one 
evening in fifteen different humours " as the night wore 
on. This, probably, was in his own youngish years (as 
well as hers and his son's), and might have a good deal of 
satirical exaggeration in it. She was the most exemplary 
nurse to her husband's brother William, and to other of 
the Penfillan sons who were brought there for help or 
furtherance. William's stay lasted five years, three of 
them involving two hours daily upon the spring deal (a 
stout elastic plank of twenty or thirty feet long, on which 
the weak patient gets himself shaken and secures exer- 



366 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

cise), she herself, day after day, doing the part of tramp- 
ler, which perhaps was judged useful or as good as 
necessary for her own health. William was not in all 
points a patient one could not have quarrelled with, and 
my mother-in-law's quiet obedience I cannot reckon 
other than exemplary — even supposing it was partly for 
her own health too. This I suppose was actually the 
case ; she had much weak health, more and more towards 
the end of life. Her husband had often signally helped 
her by his skill and zeal ; once, for six months long, he, 
and visibly he alone, had been the means of keeping her 
alive.. It was a bad inflammation or other disorder of the 
liver ; hver disorder was cured but power of digestion 
had ceased. Doctors from Edinburgh etc. unanimously 
gave her up, food of no kind would stay a moment on 
the stomach, what can any mortal of us do ? Husband 
persisted, found food that would stay (arrowroot perfectly 
pure ; if by chance, your pure stock being out, you tried 
shop arrowroot, the least of starch in it declared it futile), 
for six months kept her alive and gathering strength on 
those terms, till she rose again to her feet. " He much 
loved her," said my Jeannie, " but none could less love 
what of follies she had ; not a few, though none of them 
deep at all, the good and even noble soul ! How sadly I 
remember now, and often before now, the time when she 
vanished from her kind Jane's sight and mine, never 
more to meet us in this world. It must have been in 
autumn 1841 ; she had attended Jane down from Temp- 
land^ to Dumfries, probably I was up from Scotsbrig 

' House in Nithsdale, where Mrs. Welsh's father lived. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 367 

(but don't remember) ; I was, at any rate, to conduct my 
wife to Scotsbrig that night, and on the morrow or so, 
thence for London. Mrs. W. was unusually beautiful, 
but strangely sad too, eyes bright, and as if with many 
tears behind them. Her daughter too was sad, so was I 
at the sadness of both, and at the evidently boundless 
feeling of affection which knew not how to be kind 
enough. Into shops etc. for last gifts and later than 
last ; at length we had got all done and withdrew to 
sister Jean's to order the gig and go. She went with us 
still, but feeling what would now be the kindest, heroi- 
cally rose (still not weeping) and said Adieu there. We 
watched her, sorrowful both of us, from the end window, 
stepping, tall and graceful, feather in bonnet etc., down 
Lochmaben gate, casting no glance back, then vanishing 
to rightward, into High Street (bonnet feather perhaps, 
the last thing), and she was gone for ever. Ay de mi ! 
Ay de mi ! What a thing is life, bounded thus by death. 
I do not think we ever spoke of this, but how could either 
of us ever forget it at all ? 

Old Walter Welsh, my wife's maternal grandfather, I 
had seen twice or thrice at Templand before our marriage, 
and for the next six or seven years, especially after our 
removal to Craigenputtoch, he was naturally a principal 
figure in our small circle. He liked his granddaughter 
cordially well, she had been much about him on visits 
and so forth, from her early childhood, a bright merry 
httle grig, always pleasant in the troubled atmosphere of 
the old grandfather. " Pen " (Penfillan Jeannie, for there 
was another) he used to call her to the last ; mother's 



368 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

name in the family was " Grizzle " (Grace). A perfect 
true affection ran through all branches, my poor little 
''Pen "well included and returning it well. She was 
very fond of old Walter (as he privately was of her) and 
got a great deal of affectionate amusement out of him. 
Me, too, he found much to like in, though practically we 
discorded commonly on two points : i°, that I did and 
would smoke tobacco ; 2°, that I could not and would 
not drink with any freedom, whisky punch, or other 
liquid stimulants, a thing breathing the utmost poltroon- 
ery in some section of one's mind, thought Walter always. 
He for himself cared nothing about drink, but had the 
rooted idea (common in his old circles) that it belonged in 
some indissoluble way to good fellowship. We used to 
presently knit up the peace again, but tiffs of reproach 
from him on this score would always arise from time to 
time and had always to be laughed away by me, which 
was very easy, for I really liked old Walter heartily, and 
he was a continual genial study to me over and above ; 
microcosm of old Scottish life as it had been, and man of 
much singularity and real worth of character, and even of 
intellect too if you saw well. He abounded in contrasts ; 
glaring oppositions, contradictions, you would have said 
in every element of him, yet all springing from a single 
centre ()^ou might observe) and honestly uniting them- 
selves there. No better-natured man (sympathy, social- 
ity, honest loving-kindness towards all innocent people), 
and yet of men I have hardly seen one of hotter, more 
impatient temper. Sudden vehement breaking out into 
fierce flashes of lightning when you touched him the 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 369 

wrong way. Yet they were flashes only, never bolts, and 
were gone again in a moment, and the fine old face beam- 
ing quietly on you as before. Face uncommonly fine, 
serious, yet laughing eyes, as if inviting you in, bushy 
eyebrows, face which you might have called picturesquely 
shaggy, under its plenty of grey hair, beard itself imper- 
fectly shaved here and there ; features massive yet soft 
(almost with a tendency to pendulous or flabby in parts) 
and nothing but honesty, quick ingenuity, kindliness, and 
frank manhood as the general expression. He was a most 
simple man, of stunted utterance, burred with his r and 
had a chewing kind of way with his words, which, rapid 
and few, seemed to be forcing their way through laziness 
or phlegm, and were not extremely distinct till you at- 
tended a little (and then, aided by the face, etc., they 
were extremely and memorably brave, old Walter's words, 
so true too, as honest almost as my own father's, though 
in a strain so different). Clever things Walter never said 
or attempted to say, not wise things either in any shape 
beyond that of sincerely accepted commonplace, but he 
very well knew when such were said by others and 
glanced with a bright look on them, a bright dimpling 
chuckle sometimes (smudge of laughter, the Scotch call 
it, one of the prettiest words and ditto things), and on the 
whole hated no kind of talk but the unwise kind. He was 
serious, pensive, not more, or sad, in those old times. He 
had the prettiest laugh (once or at most twice, in my 
presence) that I can remember to have seen, not the 
loudest, my own father's still rarer laugh was louder far, 

though perhaps not more complete, but his was all of 
24 



370 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

artillery-thunder, feu de joie from all guns as the main ele* 
ment, while in Walter's there was audible something as of 
infinite flutes and harps, as if the vanquished themselves 
were invited or compelled to partake in the triumph. I 
remember one such laugh (quite forget about what), and 
how the old face looked suddenly so beautiful and young 
again. ** Radiant ever young Apollo" etc. of Teufels- 
drockh's laugh is a reminiscence of that. Now when I 
think. of it, Walter must have had an immense fund of in- 
articulate gaiety in his composition, a truly fine sense of 
the ridiculous (excellent sense in a man, especially if he 
never cultivate it, or be conscious of it, as was Walter's 
case) ; and it must have been from him that my Jane de- 
rived that beautiful Hght of humour, never going into 
folly, yet full of tacit fun, which spontaneously illumin- 
ated all her best hours. Thanks to W^alter, she was of 
him in this respect ; my father's laugh, too, is mainly 
mine, a grimmer and inferior kind ; of my mother's beau- 
tifully sportive vein, which was a third kind, also heredi- 
tary I am told, I seem to have inherited less, though not 
nothing either, nay, perhaps at bottom not even less, had 
my life chanced to be easier or joyfuller. '* Sense of the 
ridiculous " (worth calling such ; i.e. *' brotherly sympathy 
with the downward side " is withal very indispensable to 
a man ; Hebrews have it not, hardly any Jew creature, 
not even blackguard Heine, to any real length — hence 
various misquahties of theirs, perhaps most of their quali- 
ties, too, which have become historical. This is an old 
remark of mine, though not yet written anywhere. 

Walter had been a buck in his youth, a high-prancing 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 37 1 

horseman etc.; I forget what image there was of him, in 
buckskins, pipe hair-dressings, grand equipments, riding 
somewhither (with John Welsh of Penfillan I almost think ?) 
bright air im.age, from some transient discourse I need 
not say of whom. He had married a good and beautiful 
Miss Baillie (of whom already) and settled with her at 
Capelgill, in the Moffat region, where all his children were 
born, and left with him young, the mother having died, 
still in the flower of her age, ever tenderly remembered 
by Walter to his last day (as was well understood, though 
mention was avoided). From her my Jeannie was called 
"Jane Baillie Welsh" at the time of our marriage, but 
after a good few years, when she took to signing " Jane 
Welsh Carlyle," in which I never hindered her, she 
dropped the "Baillie," I suppose as too long. I have 
heard her quiz about the " unfortunate Miss Baillie " of 
the song at a still earlier time. Whether Grace Welsh 
was married from Capelgill I do not know. Walter had 
been altogether prosperous in Capelgill, and all of the 
family that I knew (John a merchant in Liverpool, the one 
remaining of the sons, and Jeannie the oneother daughter, 
a beautiful " Aunt Jeannie " of whom a word by and by) 
continued warmly attached to it as their real home in this 
earth, but at the renewal of leases (i8oi or so) had lost it 
in a quite provoking way. By the treachery of a so-called 
friend namely ; friend a neighbouring farmer perhaps, but 
with an inferior farm, came to advise with Walter about 
rents, probably his own rent first, in this general time of 
leasing. " I am thinking to offer so-and-so, what say 
you ? what are you going to offer by the by ? " Walter, 



372 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

the very soul of fidelity himself, made no scruple to an- 
swer, found by and by that this precious individual had 
thereupon himself gone and offered for Capelgill the re- 
quisite few pounds more, and that, according to fixed 
customs of the estate, he and not Walter, was declared 
tenant of Capelgill henceforth. Disdain of such scandalous 
conduct, astonishment and quasi-horror at it, could have 
been stronger in few men than in Walter, a feeling shared 
in heartily and irrevocably by all the family, who, for the 
rest, seldom spoke of it, or hardly ever, in my time, and 
did not seem to hate the man at all, but to have cut him 
off as -non-extant and left him unmentioned. Perhaps 
some Welsh he too, of a different stock ? There "were 
Moffat country Welshes, I observed, with whom they 
rather eagerly (John of Liverpool eagerly) disclaimed all 
kinship, but it might be on other grounds. This individ- 
ual's name I never once heard, nor was the story touched 
upon except by rare chance and in the lightest way. 

After Capelgill, Walter had no more farming prosper- 
ity; I believe he was unskilful in the arable kind of busi- 
ness, certainly he was unlucky, shifted about to various 
places (all in Nithsdale, and ^J think on a smaller and 
smaller scale, Castlehill in Durisdeer, Strathmilligan in 
Tynron, ultimately Templand), and had gradually lost 
nearly all his capital, which at one time was of an opulent 
extent (actual number of thousands quite unknown to me) 
and felt himself becoming old and frail, and as it were 
thrown out of the game. His family meanwhile had been 
scattered abroad, seeking their various fortune ; son John 
to Liverpool (where he had one or perhaps more uncles 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 3/3 

of mercantile distinction), son William to the West Indies 
(?) and to early death, whom I often heard lamented by 
my mother-in-law ; these and possibly others who were 
not known to me. John, by this time had, recovering 
out of one bit of very bad luck, got into a solid way of 
business, and was, he alone of the brothers, capable of 
helping his father a little on the pecuniary side. Right 
willing to do it, to the utmost of his power or farther. A 
most nmnificent, affectionate, and nobly honourable kind 
of man, much esteemed by both Jane and me, foreign as 
his way of life was to us. 

Besides these there was the youngest daughter, now a 
woman of thirty or so, the excellent " Aunt Jeannie," so 
lovable to both of us, who was said to resemble her 
mother (** nearly as beautiful all but the golden hair," — 
Jeannie's was fine flaxen, complexion of the fairest), who 
had watched over and waited on her father, through all 
his vicissitudes, and everywhere kept a comfortable, fru- 
gally effective and even elegant house round him, and in 
fact let no wind visit him too roughly. She was a beauti- 
fully patient, ingenious, and practically thoughtful crea- 
ture, always cheerful of face, suppressing herself and her 
sorrows, of which I understood there had been enough, 
in order to screen her father, and make life still soft to 
him. By aid of John, perhaps slightly of my mother-in- 
law, the little farm of Templand (Queensberry farm, with 
a strong but gaunt and inconvenient old stone house on 
it) was leased and equipped for the old man. House 
thoroughly repaired, garden etc., that he might still feel 
himself an active citizen, and have a civilised habitation in 



374 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

his weak years. Nothing could be neater, trimmer, in all 
essential particulars more complete than house and envi- 
ronment, under Aunt Jeannie's fine managing, had in a 
year or two grown to be. Fine sheltered, beautifully 
useful garden in front, with trellises, flower-work, and 
stripe of the cleanest river shingle between porch and it. 
House all clean and complete Hke a new coin, steadily 
kept dry (by industry), bedroom and every part ; old fur- 
niture (of Capelgill) really interesting to the eye, as well 
as perfect for its duties. Dairy, kitchen, etc., nothing 
that was fairly needful or useful could you find to be want- 
ing ; the whole had the air, to a visitor like myself, as of 
a rustic idyll (the seamy side of it all strictly hidden by 
clever Aunt Jeannie ; I think she must have been, what I 
often heard, one of the best housekeepers in the world.) 
Dear, good Httle beauty ; it appears too, she had met 
wqth her tragedies in life ; one tragedy hardest of all 
upon a woman, betrothed lover flying off into infamous 
treason, not against her specially, but against her brother 
and his own honour and conscience (brother's partner he 
was, if I recollect rightly, and fled with all the funds, 
leaving i2,ODo/. of minus), which annihilated him for her, 
and closed her poor heart against hopes of that kind at 
an early period of her life. Much lying on her mind, I 
always understood, while she was so cheery, diligent and 
helpful to everybody round her. I forget, or never knew, 
what time they had come to Templand, but guess it may 
have been in 1822 or shortly after ; dates of Castlehill and 
Strathmilligan I never knew, even order of dates ; last 
summer I could so easily have known (deaf-and-dumb 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 375 

'' Mr. Turner," an old Strathmilligan acquaintance, recog- 
nised by her in the Dumfries Railway Station, and made 
to speak by paper and pencil, I writing for her because she 
could not). Oh me, oh me ! where is now that summer 
evening, so beautiful, so infinitely sad and strange ! The 
train rolled off with her to Thornhill [Holmhill] and that 
too, with its setting sun, is gone. I almost think Duris- 
deer (Castlehill) must have been last before Templand ; 
I remember passing that quaint old kirk (with village hid- 
den) on my left one April evening, on the top of a Dum- 
fries coach from Edinburgh, with reveries and pensive re- 
flections which must have belonged to 1822 or 1823. 
Once, long after, on one of our London visits, I drove 
thither sitting by her, in an afternoon and, saw the gypsy 
village for the first time, and looked in with her at the fine 
Italian sculptures on the Queensberry tomb through a gap 
in the old kirk wall. Again a pensive evening, now so 
beautiful and sad. 

From childhood upwards she seemed to have been 
much about these homes of old Walter, summer visits al- 
most yearly, and after her father's death, like to be of 
longer continuance. They must have been a quiet, wel- 
come, and right wholesome element for her young heart 
and vividly growing mind ; beautiful simplicity and rural 
Scottish nature in its very finest form, frugal, elegant, 
true and kindly ; simplex mimditiis nowhere more de- 
scriptive both for men and things. To myself, summon- 
ing up what I experienced of them, there was a real gain 
from them as well as pleasure. Rough nature I knew 
well already, or perhaps too well, but here it was reduced 



376 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

to cosmic, and had a victorious character which was new 
and grateful to me, well nigh poetical. The old Norse 
kings, the Homeric grazier sovereigns of men, I have felt 
in reading of them as if their ways had a kinship with 
these (unsung) Nithsdale ones. Poor ''Aunt Jeannie " 
sickened visibly the summer after our marriage (summer 
1827), while we were there on visit. My own little 
Jeannie, whom nothing could escape that she had the in- 
terest to fix her lynx-eyed scrutiny upon, discovered just 
before our leaving, that her dear aunt was dangerously 
ill, and indeed had long been — a cancer — tumour now 
evidently cancerous, growing on her breast for twelve 
years past, which, after effort, she at last made the poor 
aunt confess to. We were all (I myself by sympathy, had 
there been nothing more) thrown into consternation, made 
the matter known at Liverpool etc., to everybody but old 
Walter, and had no need to insist on immediate steps 
being taken. My mother-in-law was an inmate there, 
and probably in chief command (had moved thither, 
quitting Haddington for good, directly on our marriage) ; 
she at once took measures, having indeed a turn herself 
for medicining and some skill withal. That autumn Aunt 
Jeannie and she came to Edinburgh, had a furnished 
house close by us, in Comley Bank, and there the dismal 
operation was performed, successfully the doctors all said; 
but alas ! Dim sorrow rests on those weeks to me. Aunt 
Jeannie showed her old heroism, and my wife herself 
strove to hope, but it was painful, oppressive, sad ; twice 
or so I recollect being in the sick-room, and the pale yet 
smihng face, more excitation in the eyes than usual ; one 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 377 

of the times she was giving us the earnest counsel (my 
Jane having been consulting), ** to go to London, cleyly, 
if I could — if they would give me the professorship there." 
(Some professorship in Gower Street, perhaps of Litera- 
ture, which I had hoped vaguely, not strongly at all, nor 
ever formally declaring myself, through Jeffrey, from his 
friend Brougham and consorts, which they were kind 
enough to dispose of otherwise). My own poor little 
Jeannie ! my poor pair of kind little Jeannies ! Poor 
Templand Jeannie went home' again, striving to hope, but 
sickened in winter, worsened when the spring came, and 
summer 1838 was still some weeks off when she had de- 
parted. It must have been in April or March of 1828. 
The funeral at Crawfurd I remember sadly well ; old 
Walter, John and two sons (Walter of Auchtertool, and 
Alick now successor in Liverpool), with various old Mof- 
fat people etc. etc. at the inn at Crawfurd ; pass of Dal- 
veen with Dr. Russell in the dark (holding candles, 
both of us, inside the chaise), and old Walter's silent sor- 
row and my own as we sat together in the vacant parlour 
after getting home. '* Hah, we'll no see her nae mair ! " 
murmured the old man, and that was all I heard from him, 
I think. 

Old Walter now fell entirely to the care of daughter 
*' Grizzie," who was unweariedly attentive to him, a most 
affectionate daughter, an excellent housewife too, and had 
money enough to support herself and him in their quiet, 
neat and frugal way. Templand continued in all points 
as trim and beautiful as ever ; the old man made no kind 
of complaint, and in economics there was even an improve- 



3/8 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

merit. But the old cheery patience of daughter ''Jean- 
nie/' magnanimously effacing herself, and returning all his 
little spirits of smoke in the form of lambent kindly flame 
and radiant light upon him, was no longer there ; and we 
did not doubt but he sometimes felt the change. Temp- 
land has a very fine situation ; old Walter's walk, at 
the south end of the house, was one of the most pictur- 
esque and pretty to be found in the world. Nith valley 
(river half a mile off, winding through green holms, now 
in its borders of clean shingle, now lost in pleasant woods 
and rushes) lay patent to the S., the country sinking per- 
haps 100 feet rather suddenly ; just beyond Templand, 
Kier, Penpont, Tynron lying spread, across the river, all 
as in a map, full of cheerful habitations, gentlemen's man- 
sions, well-cultivated farms and their cottages and append- 
ages ; spreading up in irregular slopes and gorges against 
the finest range of hills, Barjarg with its trees and mansion 
atop, to your left hand Tynron Down, a grand massive 
lowland mountain (you might call it) with its white village 
at the base (behind which in summer time was the setting 
of the sun for you) ; one big pass (Glen-shinnel, with the 
clearest river-water I ever saw out of Cumberland) bisect- 
ing this expanse of heights, and leading you by the Clove 
(''cloven?") of Maxwellton, into Glencairn valley, and 
over the Black Craig of Dunscore (Dun-scoir=: Black hill) 
and to Craigenputtoch if you chose. Westward of Tynron 
rose Drumlanrig Castle and w^oods, and the view, if you 
quite turned your back to Dumfries, ended in the Lothers, 
Leadhills, and other lofty mountains, watershed and bound- 
ary of Lanarkshire and Dumfriesshire, rugged, beautifully 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 379 

piled sierra, winding round into the eastern heights (very- 
pretty too) which part Annandale from Nithsdale. [Alas, 
what is the use of all this, here and now ?] Closeburn, 
mansion, woods, greeneries, backed by brown steep 
masses, was on the southeastern side, house etc. hiding it 
from Walter's walk. Walk where you liked, the view you 
could reckon unsurpassable, not the least .needing to be 
"surpassed." Walter's walk speci4|l (it never had any 
name of that kind ; but from the garden he glided mostly 
into it, in fine days, a small green seat at each end of it, 
and a small ditto gate, easy to open and shut) was not 
above 150 yards long ; but he sauntered and walked in it 
as fancy bade him (not with an eye to " regimen," except 
so far as " fancy" herself might unconsciously point that 
way) ; took his newspapers (Liverpool sent by John) to 
read there in the sunny seasons, or sat, silent, but with a 
quietly alert look, contemplating the glorious panorama of 
" sky-covered earth" in that part, and mildly reaping his 
poor bit of harvest from it without needing to pay rent ! 
We went over often from Craigenputtoch : were al- 
ways a most welcome arrival, surprise oftenest, and our 
bits of visits, which could never be prolonged, were uni- 
formly pleasant on both sides. One of our chief pleasures, 
I think almost our chief, during those moorland years. 
Oh those pleasant gig-drives, in fine leafy twilight, or 
deep in the night sometimes, ourselves two alone in the 
world, the good " Larry " faring us (rather too light for 
the job, but always soft and willing), how they rise on me 
now, benignantly luminous from the bosom of the grim 
dead night ! Night ! what would I give for one, the very 



380 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

worst of them, at this moment ! Once we had gone to 
Dumfries, in a soft misty December day (for a portrait 
which my darhng wanted, not of herself!); a bridge was 
found broken as we went down, brook unsafe by night ; 
we had to try ** Cluden (Lower Cairn) Water" road, as 
all was mist and pitch-darkness, on our return, road un- 
known except in general, and drive like no other in my 
memory. Cairn hoaijely roaring on the left (my darling's 
side); '* Larry," with but one lamp-candle (for we had 
put out the other, lest both might fall done), bending 
always to be straight in the light of that ; I really anxious, 
though speaking only hopefully ; my darling so full of 
trust in me, really happy and opulently interested in these 
equipments ; in these poor and dangerous circumstances 
how opulent is a nobly royal heart ! She had the worth- 
less "portrait" (pencil sketch by a wandering German, 
announced to us by poor and hospitable Mrs. Richardson, 
once a '' novelist" of mark, much of a gentlewoman and 
well loved by us both) safe in her reticule ; '* better far 
than none," she cheerfully said of it, and the price, I think, 
had been 5^., fruit of her thrift too: — well, could Cali- 
fornia have made me and her so rich, had I known it 
(sorry gloomy mortal) just as she did ? To noble hearts 
such wealth is there in poverty itself, and impossible with- 
out poverty ! I saw ahead, high in the mist, the mina- 
rets of Dunscore Kirk, at last, glad sight; at Mrs. 
Broatch's cosy rough inn, we got " Larry" fed, ourselves 
dried and refreshed (still seven miles to do, but road all 
plain) ; and got home safe, after a pleasant day, in spite 
of all. Then the drive to Boreland once (George Welsh's, 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 3^1 

"Uncle George," youngest of the Penfillans) ; heart of 
winter, intense cahii frost, and through Dumfries, at least 
35 miles for poor ''Larry "and us; very beautiful that 
too, and very strange, past the base of towering New 
Abbey, huge ruins, piercing grandly into the silent frosty 
sunset, on this hand, despicable cowhouse of Presbyterian 
kirk on that hand (sad new contrast to Devorgilla's old 
bounty) etc. etc. : — of our drive home again I recollect 
only her invincible contentment, and the poor old cotter 
woman offering to warm us with a flame of dry broom, 
'* A'U licht a bruim couev, if yell please to come in!" 
Another time we had gone to " Dumfries Cattle Show " 
(first of its race, which are many since) ; a kind of lark on 
our part, and really entertaining, though the day proved 
shockingly wet and muddy ; saw various notabilities 
there. Sir James Grahame (baddish, proud man, we both 
thought by physiognomy, and did not afterwards alter 
our opinion much), Ramsay Macculloch (in sky-blue coat, 
shiningly on visit from London) etc. etc., with none of 
whom, or few, had we right (or wish) to speak, abun- 
dantly occupied with seeing so many fine specimens, 
biped and quadruped. In afternoon we suddenly deter- 
mined to take Templand for the night (nearer by some 
miles, and weather still so wet and muddy) ; and did so, 
with the best success, a right glad surprise there. Poor 
Huskisson had perished near Liverpool, in first trial 
of the railway, I think, the very day before ; at any rate 
we heard the news, or at least the full particulars there, 
the tragedy (spectacular mostly, but not quite, or inhu- 
manly in any sense) of our bright glad evening there. 



382 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

The Liverpool children first, then " Uncle John " him- 
self for a fortnight or so, used to come every summer, and 
stir up Templand's quietude to us bystanders in a purely 
agreeable way. Of the children* I recollect nothing 
almost ; nothing that was not cheerful and auroral matu- 
tinal. The two boys, Walter and Ahck, came once on 
visit to us, perhaps oftener, but once I recollect their lying 
quiet in their big bed till eleven A.M., with exemplary 
poUteness, for fear of awakening me who had been up for 
two hours, though everybody had forgotten to announce 
it to them. We ran across to Tenjpland rather oftener 
than usual on these occasions, and I suppose stayed a 
shorter time. 

My Jeannie had a great love and regard for her 
*' Uncle John," whose faults she knew well enough, but 
knew to be of the surface all, while his worth of many fine 
kinds ran in the blood, and never once failed to show in 
the conduct when called for. He had all his father's 
veracity, integrity, abhorrence of dishonourable behaviour ; 
was kind, munificent, frank, and had more that his father's 
impetuosity, vehemence, and violence, or perhaps was 
only more provoked (in his way of life), to exhibit these 
qualities now and then. He was cheerful, musical, 
politely conversible ; truly a genial harmonious, loving 
nature ; but there was a roar in him too like a lion's. 
He had had great misfortunes and provocations ; his way 
of life, in dusty, sooty, ever noisy Liverpool, with its din- 
nerings, wine-drinkings, dull evening parties issuing in 
whist, was not his element, few men's less, though he 
made not the least complaint of it (even to himself, I 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 383 

think) : but his heart, and all his pleasant memories and 
thoughts, were in the breezy hills of Moffatdale, with the 
rustic natives there, and their shepherdings, huntings 
(brock and fox), and solitary fishings in the clear streams. 
It was beautiful to see how he made some pilgriming into 
those or the kindred localities ;, never failed to search out 
all his father's old herdsmen (with a sovereign or two for 
each, punctual as fate) ; and had a few days' fishing as 
one item. He had got his schooling at Closeburn ; was, 
if not very learned, a very intelligent enquiring kind of 
man ; could talk to you instructively about all manner of 
practical things ; and loved to talk with the intelligent, 
though nearly all his life was doomed to pass itself with 
the stupid or commonplace sort, who were intent upon 
nothing but "getting on," and giving dinners or getting 
them. Rarely did he burst out into brief fiery recognition 
of all this ; yet once at least, before my time, I heard of 
his doing so in his own drawing-room, with brevity, but 
with memorable emphasis and fury. He was studiously 
polite in general, always so to those who deserved it, not 
quite always to those who did not. 

His demeanour in his bankruptcy, his and his wife's 
(who for the rest, though a worthy well-intending, was 
little of an amiable woman), when the villain of a partner 
eloped, and left him possessor of a minus 12,000/., with 
other still painfuller items (sister Jeannie's incurable heart, 
for example) was admitted to be beautiful. Creditors had 
been handsome and gentle, aware ho\y the case stood ; 
household with all its properties and ornaments left intact, 
etc. Wife rigorously locked all her plate away ; husband 



384 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

laboriously looked out for a new course of business ; in- 
geniously found or created one, prospered in it, saving 
every penny possible ; thus, after perhaps seven or eight 
years, had a great dinner : all the plate out again, all the 
creditors there, and under every man's cover punctual 
sum due, payment complete to every creditor; ** Pocket 
your cheques, gentlemen, with our poor warmest thanks, 
and let us drink better luck for time coming ! " He pros- 
pered always afterwards, but never saved much money, 
too hospitable, far too open-handed, for that ; all his din- 
ners, ever since I knew him, were given (never dined out, 
he), and in more than one instance, to our knowledge, 
ruined people were lifted up by him (one widow cousin, 
one orphan, youngest daughter of an acquaintance e.g.) 
as if they had been his own ; sank possibly enough mainly 
or altogether into his hands, and were triumphantly (with 
patience and in silence) brought through. No wonder 
my darhng liked this uncle, nor had I the least difficulty 
in liking him. 

Once I remember mounting early, almost with the 
sun (a kind hand expediting, perhaps sending me), to 
breakfast at Templand, and spend the day with him there. 
I rode by the shoulder of the Black Craig (Dunscore Hill), 
might see Dumfries with its cap of early kitchen-smoke, 
all shrunk to the size of one's hat, though there were 
11,000 souls in it, far away to the right ; descended then, 
by Cairn, by the Clove of Maxwellton (where at length 
came roads), through fragrant grassy or bushy solitudes ; 
at the Bridge of Shinnel, looked down into the pellucid 
glassy pool, rushing through its rock chasms, and at a 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 385 

young peasant woman, pulling potatoes by the brink, 
chubby infant at her knee — one of the finest mornings, 
one of the pleasantest rides ; and arrived at Templand in 
good time and trim for my hosts. The day I forget ; 
would be spent wholesomely wandering about, in rational 
talk on indifferent matters. Another time, long after, new 
from London then, I had wandered out with him, his two 
pretty daughters, and a poor good cousin called Robert 
Macqueen attending. We gradually strolled into Crichop 
Linn (a strange high-lying chasmy place, near Closeburn) ; 
there pausing, well aloft, and shaded from the noon sun, 
the two girls, with their father for octave accompaniment, 
sang us ''The Birks of Aberfeldy " so as I have seldom 
heard a song; voices excellent and true, especially his 
voice and native expression given ; which stirred my poor 
London-fevered heart almost to tears. One earlier visit 
from London, I had driven up, latish, from Dumfries, to 
see my own little woman who was there among them all. 
No wink could I sleep; at length about three A.M., re- 
flecting how miserable I should be all day, and cause only 
misery to the others, I (with leave had) rose, yoked my 
gig, and drove away the road I had come. Morning 
cold and surly, all mortals still quiet, except unhappy 
self; I remember seeing towards Auldfjarth, within a few 
yards of my road, a vigilant industrious heron, mid-leg 
deep in the Nith-stream, diligently fishing, dabbing its 
long bill and hungry eyes down into the rushing water 
(tail up stream), and paying no regard to my wheels or 
me. The only time I ever saw a hernshaw (" herrin'- 
shouw" the Annandalers call it) actually fishing. Ccetera 
25 



386 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

destint ; of Dumfries, of the day there, and its sequences, 
all trace is gone. It must have been soon after French 
Revolution Book ; nerves all inflamed and torn up, body 
and mind in a most hag-ridden condition (too much their 
normal one those many London years). 

Of visits from Templand there were not so many ; 
but my darhng (hampered and gyved as we were by the 
genius loci and its difficulties) always triumphantly made 
them do. She had the genius of a field -marshal, not to 
be taken by surprise, or weight of odds, in these cases ! 
Oh, my beautiful little guardian spirit ! Twice at least 
there was visit from Uncle John in person and the Liver- 
pool strangers, escorted by mother ; my mother, too, was 
there one of the times. Warning I suppose had been 
given ; night-quarters etc. all arranged. Uncle John and 
boys went down to Orr Water, I attending without rod, 
to fish. Tramping about on the mossy brink, uncle and 
I awoke an adder ; we had just passed its underground 
hole ; alarm rose, looking round, we saw the vile sooty- 
looking fatal abominable wretch, towering up above a 
yard high (the only time I ever saw an adder) ; one of the 
boys snatched a stray branch, hurried up from behind, 
and with a good hearty switch or two, broke the creature's 
back. 

Another of these dinner days, I was in the throes of a 
review article ('' Characteristics," was it ?) and could not 
attend the sport; but sauntered about, much on the strain, 
to small purpose ; dinner all the time that I could afford. 
Smoking outside at the dining-room window, " Is not 
every day the conflux of two eternities," thought I, "for 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 387 

every man ? " Lines of Influence from all the past and 
stretching onwards into ail the future, do intersect there. 
That little thoughtkin stands in some of my books ; I 
recollect being thankful (scraggily thankful) for the day 
of small things. 

We must have gone to Craigenputtoch early in May 
1828. I remember passing our furniture carts (my fa- 
ther's carts from Scotsbrig, conducted by my two farm- 
ing brothers) somewhere about Elvanfoot, as the coach 
brought us two along. I don't remember our going up 
to Craigenputtoch (a day or two after), but do well re- 
member what a bewildering heap it all was for some time 
after. 

Geraldine's Craigenputtoch stories are more mythical 
than any of the rest. Each consists of two or three, in 
confused exaggerated state, rolled with new confusion 
into one, and given wholly to her, when perhaps they 
were mainly some servant's in whom she was concerned. 
That of the kitchen door, which could not be closed again 
on the snowy morning, etc., that is a fact very visible 
to me yet ; and how I, coming down for a light to my 
pipe, found Grace Macdonald (our Edinburgh servant, 
and a most clever and complete one) in tears and despair, 
with a stupid farm- servant endeavouring vainly by main 
force to pull the door to, which, as it had a frame round 
it, sill and all, for keeping out the wind, could not be 
shut except by somebody from within (me, e.g.) who 
would first clear out the snow at the sill, and then, with 
his best speed, shut ; which I easily did. The washing 
of the kitchen floor etc. (of which I can remember 



388 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

nothing) must have been years distant, under some quite 
other servant, and was probably as much of a joyous half- 
frolic as of anything else. I can remember very well her 
coming in to me, late at night (eleven or so), with her 
first loaf, looking mere triumph and quizzical gaiety : 
" See ! " The loaf was excellent, only the crust a little 
burnt ; and she compared herself to Cellini and his Per- 
seus, of whom we had been reading. From that hour 
we never wanted excellent bread. In fact, the saving 
charm of her life at Craiggenputtoch, which to another 
young lady of her years might have been so gloomy and 
vacant,, was that of conquering the innumerable practical 
problems that had arisen for her there ; all of which, I 
think all, she triumphantly mastered. Dairy, poultry- 
yard, piggery ; I remember one exquisite pig, which we 
called Fixie (*' Quintus Fixlein " of Jean Paul), and such 
a little ham of it as could not be equalled. Her cow gave 
twenty-four quarts of milk daily in the two or three best 
months of summer ; and such cream, and such butter 
(though oh, she had such a problem with that ; owing to 
a bitter herb among the grass, not known of till long after 
by my heroic darling, and she triumphed over that, too) ! 
That of milking with her own little hand, I think, could 
never have been necessary, even by accident (plenty of 
milkmaids within call), and I conclude must have had a 
spice of frolic or adventure in it, for which she had abun- 
dant spirit. Perfection of housekeeping was her clear and 
speedy attainment in that new scene. Strange how she 
made the desert blossom for herself and me there ; what 
a fairy palace she had made of that wild moorland home 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 389 

of the poor man ! In my life I have seen no human intel- 
ligence that so genuinely pervaded every fibre of the 
human existence it belonged to. From the baking of a 
loaf, or the darning of a stocking, up to comporting her- 
self in the highest scenes or most intricate emergencies, 
all was insight, veracity, graceful success (if you could 
judge it), fidelity to insight of the fact given. 

We had trouble with servants, with many paltry ele- 
ments and objects, and were very poor ; but I do not 
think our days there were sad, and certainly not hers in 
especial, but mine rather. We read together at night, 
one winter, through " Don Quixote " in the original ; 
Tasso in ditto had come before ; but that did not last 
very long. I was diligently writing and reading there ; 
wrote most of the ** Miscellanies " there, for Foreign, 
Edinburgh, etc. Reviews (obliged to keep several strings 
to my bow^l, and took serious thought about every part 
of every one of them. After finishing an article, we used 
to ^-et on horseback, or mount into our soft old crjcr and 
drive away, either to her mother's (Templand, fourteen 
miles oft\ or to my father and mother's (Scotsbrig, seven 
or six-and-thirty miles); the pleasantest journeys I ever 
made, and the pleasantest visits. Stay perhaps three 
days ; hardly ever more than four ; then back to work 
and silence. My father she particularly loved, and recog- 
nised all the grand rude worth and immense originality 
that lay in him. Her demeanour at Scotsbrig, throughout 
in fact, was like herself, unsurpassable ; and took captive 
all those true souls, from oldest to youngest, who by 
habit and type might have been so utterly foreign to her. 



390 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

At Templand or there, our presence always made a sun- 
shiny time. To Templand we sometimes rode on an 
evening, to return next day early enough for something of 
work ; this was charming generally. Once I remember 
we had come by Barjarg, not by Auldgarth (Bridge), and 
were riding, the Nith then in flood, from Penfillan or Pen- 
pont neighbourhood ; she was fearlessly following or ac- 
companying me ; and there remained only one little arm 
to cross, which did look a thought ugher, but gave me no 
disturbance, when a farmer figure was seen on the farther 
bank or fields, earnestly waving and signalling (could not 
be heard for the floods) ; but for whom we should surely 
have had some accident, who knows how bad ! Never 
rode that water again, at least never in flood, I am sure. 

We were not unhappy at Craigenputtoch ; perhaps 
these were our happiest days. Useful, continual labour, 
essentially successful ; that makes even the moor green. 
I found I could do fully twice as much work in a given 
time there, as with my best effort was possible in London, 
such the interruptions etc. Once, in the winter time, I 
remember counting that for three months, there had not 
been any stranger, not even a beggar, called at Craigen- 
puttoch door. In summer we had sparsely visitors, now 
and then her mother, or my own, once my father ; who 
never before had been so far from his birthplace as when 
here (and yet '' knew the world " as few of his time did, 
so well had he looked at what he did see) ! At Auld- 
garth Brig, which he had assisted to build when a lad 
of fifteen, and which was the beginning of all good to 
him, and to all his brothers (and to me), his emotion, 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 391 

after fifty-five years, was described to me as strong, con- 
spicuous and silent. He delighted us, especially her, at 
Craigenputtoch, himself evidently thinking of his latter 
end, in a most intense, awe-stricken, but also quiet and 
altogether human way. Since my sister Margaret's 
death he had been steadily sinking in strength, though 
we did not then notice it. On August 12 (for the 
grouse's sake) Robert Welsh, her uncle, was pretty cer- 
tain to be there, with a tag-raggery of Dumfries Writers, 
dogs, etc. etc., whom, though we liked him very well, 
even I, and much more she, who had to provide, find 
beds, etc., felt to be a nuisance. I got at last into the 
way of riding off, for some visit or the like, on August 
12, and unless " Uncle Robert " came in person, she also 
would answer, ''not at home." 

An iateresting relation to Goethe had likewise begun 
in Comley Bank first, and now went on increasing ; 
" boxes from Weimar" (and " to," at least once or twice) 
were from time to time a most sunny event ; I remember 
her making for Ottilie a beautiful Highland bonnet 
(bright blue velvet, with silvered thistle etc.), which gave 
plenty of pleasure on both hands. The sketch of Craig- 
enputtoch ^ was taken by G. Moir, advocate (ultimately 
sheriff, professor, etc., "little Geordie Moir" as we 
called him), who was once and no more with us. The 
visit of Emerson from Concord, and our quiet night of 
clear fine talk, was also very pretty to both of us. The 
Jeffreys came twice, expressly, and once we went to 

' Sent to Goethe, and engraved under Goethe's direction for the German 
translation of Carlyle's Life of Schiller. 



392 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

Dumfries by appointment to meet them in passing. 
Their correspondence was there a steadily enlivening 
element. One of the visits (I forget whether first or last, 
but from Hazlitt, London, there came to Jeffrey a death- 
bed letter one of the days, and instead of '' lo/.," 50/. 
went by return) ; Jeffrey, one of the nights, young laird 
of Stroquhan present, was, what with mimicry of speakers, 
what with other cleverness and sprightliness, the most 
brilliantly amusing creature I have ever chanced to see. 
One time we went to Craigcrook, and returned their visit, 
and, as I can now see, stayed at least a week too long. 
His health was beginning to break ; he and I had, nightly, 
long arguments (far too frank and equal on my side, I 
can now see with penitence) about moral matters, perhaps 
till two or three A.M. He was a most gifted, prompt, 
ingenious little man (essentially a dramatic genius, say a 
melodious Goldoni or more, but made into a Scotch ad- 
vocate and Whig) ; never a deeply serious man. He 
discovered here, I think, that I could not be ** converted," 
and that I was of thoughtlessly rugged rustic ways, and 
faultily irreverent of him (which, alas, I was). The cor- 
respondence became mainly hers by degrees, but was, for 
years after, a cheerful, lively element, in spite of Reform 
Bills and officialities (ruinous to poor Jeffrey's health and 
comfort) which, before long, supervened. We were at 
Haddington on that Craigcrook occasion, stayed with the 
Donaldsons at Sunnybank {hodie Tenterfield), who were 
her oldest and dearest friends (hereditarily and otherwise) 
in that region. I well remember the gloom of our arrival 
back to Craigenputtoch, a miserable wet, windy Novem- 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 393 

ber evening, with the yellow leaves all flying about, and 
the sound of brother Alick's stithy (who sometimes 
amused himself with smithwork, to small purpose), clink, 
clinking solitary through the blustering element. I said 
nothing, far was she from ever, in the like case, saying 
anything. Indeed I think we at once re-adjusted our- 
selves, and went on diligently with the old degree of in- 
dustry and satisfaction. 

" Old Esther," whose death came one of our early 
winters, was a bit of memorability in that altogether 
vacant scene. I forget the old woman's surname (per- 
haps M'George ?), but well recall her lumpish heavy 
figure (lame of a foot), and her honest, quiet, not stupid 
countenance of mixed ugliness and stoicism. She lived 
about a mile from us in a poor cottage of the next farm 
(Corson's, of Nether Craigenputtoch ; very stupid young 
brother, now minister in Ayrshire, used to come and 
bore me at rare intervals) ; Esther had been a laird's 
daughter riding her palfrey at one time, but had gone to 
wreck, father and self — a special "misfortune" (so they 
delicately name it), being of Esther's own producing. 
"Misfortune" in the shape ultimately of a solid tall 
ditcher, very good to his old mother Esther ; had, just 
before our coming, perished miserably one night on the 
shoulder of Dunscore hill (found dead there, next morn- 
ing) which had driven his poor old mother up to this 
thriftier hut, and silent mode of living, in our moorland 
part of the parish. She did not beg, nor had my Jeannie 
much to have given her of help (perhaps on occasion 
milk, old warm clothes, etc.), though always very sorry for 



594 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

her last sad bereavement of the stalwart affectionate son. 
I remember one frosty kind of forenoon, while walking 
meditative to the top of our hill (now a mass of bare or 
moorland whinstone crag, once a woody wilderness, with 
woody mountain in the middle of it, '' Craigenputtick, or 
the stone mountain," " Craig" of the ** Puttick," puttick 
being a sort of hawk, both in Galloway speech and in 
Shakespeare's old Enghsh ; " Hill forest of the Putticks," 
now a very bare place), the universal silence was com- 
plete, all but one click-clack, heard regularly like a far- 
off spondee or iambus rather, ** click-clack," at regular 
intervals, a great way to my right. No other sound in 
nature ; on looking sharply I discovered it to be old 
Esther on the highway, crippling along towards our house 
most probably. Poor old soul, thought I, what a desola- 
tion ! but you will meet a kind face too, perhaps ! heaven 
is over all. 

Not long afterwards, poor old Esther sank to bed; 
death-bed, as my Jane (who had a quick and sure eye in 
these things), well judged it would be. Sickness did not 
last above a ten days ; my poor wife zealously assiduous, 
and with a minimum of fuss or noise. I remember those 
few poor days ; as full of human interest to her (and 
through her to me), and of a human pity, not painful, but 
sweet and genuine. She went walking every morning, 
especially every night, to arrange the poor bed etc. 
(nothing but rudish hands, rude though kind enough, 
being about), the poor old woman evidently gratified by 
it and heart-thankful, and almost to the very end giving 
clear sign of that. Something pathetic in poor old 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 395 

Esther and her exit — nay, if I rightly bethink me, that 
" chck-clack " pilgrimage had in fact been a last visit to 
Craigenputtoch with some poor bit of crockery (small 
grey-lettered butter-plate, which I used to see) '*as a 
wee memorandum o' me, mem, when I am gane ! 'I 
** Memorandum " was her word; and I remember the 
poor little platter for years after. Poor old Esther had 
awoke, that frosty morning, with a feeling that she would 
soon die, that ** the bonny leddy " had been "unco' guid " 
to her, and that there was still that " wee bit memoran- 
dum." Nay, I think she had, or had once had, the 
remains, or complete ghost of a " fine old riding-habit," 
once her own, which the curious had seen : but she had 
judged it more polite to leave to the parish. Ah me 1 

The gallop to Dumfries and back on " Larry," an 
excellent, well-paced, well-broken loyal little horse of 
hers (thirteen hands or so, an exceeding favourite, and 
her last), thirty good miles of swift canter at the least, is 
a fact which I well remember, though from home at the 
moment. Word had come (to her virtually, or properly 
perhaps), that the Jeffreys, three and a servant, were to 
be there, day after to-morrow, perhaps to-morrow itself; 
I was at Scotsbrig, nothing ready at all (and such narrow 
means to get ready anything, my darling heroine ! ) She 
directly mounted " Larry," who *' seemed to know that 
he must gallop, and faithfully did it ; " laid her plans 
while galloping ; ordered everything at Dumfries ; sent 
word to me express ; and galloped home, and stood 
victoriously prepared at all points to receive the Jeftreys, 
who, I think, were all there on my arrival. The night of 



396 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

her express is to me very memorable for its own sake. I 
had been to Burnswark (visit to good old Grahame, and 
walk of three miles to and three from) ; it was ten P.M. of 
a most still and fine night, when I arrived at my father's 
door, heard him making worship, and stood meditative, 
gratefully, lovingly, till he had ended ; thinking to my- 
self, how good and innocently beautiful and peaceful on 
the earth is all this, and it was the last time I was ever to 
hear it. I must have been there twice or oftener in my 
father's time, but the sound of his pious Coleshill (that 
was always his tune), pious psalm and prayer, I never 
heard again. With a noble politeness, very noble when 
I consider, they kept all that in a fine kind of remote- 
ness from us, knowing (and somehow forgiving us com- 
pletely), that we did not think of it quite as they. My 
Jane's express would come next morning ; and of course 
I made '' Larry " ply his hoofs. 

The second ride, in Geraldine, is nearly altogether 
mythical, being in reality a ride from Dumfries to Scots- 
brig (two and a half miles beyond " Ecclefechan," where 
none of us ever passed) with some loss of road within the 
last five miles (wrong turn at Hodden Brig, I guessed), 
darkness (night-time in May), money etc., and "terror" 
enough for a commonplace young lady, but Httle or noth- 
ing of real danger, and terror not an element at all, I 
fancy, in her courageous mind. '' Larry," I think, can- 
not have been her horse (half-blind two years before in 
an epidemic, through which she nursed him fondly, he 
Once '' kissing her cheek " in gratitude, she always 
thought), or "Larry" would have known the road, for 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 39/ 

we had often ridden and driven it. I was at that time 
gone to London, in quest of houses. 

My last considerable bit of writing at Craigenputtoch 
was " Sartor Resartus ; " done, I think, between January 
and August 1830; my sister Margaret had died while it 
was going on. I well remember when and how (at Temp- 
land one morning) the germ of it rose above ground. 
" Nine months," I used to say, it had cost me in writing. 
Had the perpetual fluctuation, the uncertainty and unin- 
telligible whimsicality of Review Editors not proved so 
intolerable, we might have lingered longer at Craigenput- 
toch, "perfectly left alone, and able to do more work, 
beyond doubt, than elsewhere." But a book did seem to 
promise some respite from that, and perhaps further ad- 
vantages. Teufelsdrockh was ready ; and (first days of 
August) I decided to make for London. Night before 
going, how I still remember it ! I was lying on my back 
on the sofa in the drawing-room ; she sitting by the table 
(late at night, packing all done, I suppose) : her words 
had a guise of sport but were profoundly plaintive in 
meaning, " About to depart, who knows for how long ; 
and what may have come in the interirh ! " this was her 
thought, and she was evidently much out of spirits. 
" Courage, dearie, only for a month ! " I would say to 
her in some form or other. I went, next morning early, 
Alick driving : embarked at Glencaple Quay ; voyage as 
far as Liverpool still vivid to me ; the rest, till arrival in 
London, gone mostly extinct : let it ! The beggarly his- 
tory of poor " Sartor" among the blockheadisms is not 
worth recording, or remembering — least of all here ! In 



398 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

short, finding that whereas I had got lOo/. (if memory 
serve) for " Schiller " six or seven years before, and for 
" Sartor," at least thrice as good, I could not only not 
"get 200/.," but even get no "Murray" or the like to 
publish it on '* half profits " (Murray a most stupendous 
object to me ; tumbling about, eyeless, with the evidently 
strong wish to say "yes and no ; " my first signal expe- 
rience of that sad human predicament) ; I said, " We will 
make it no, then ; wrap up our MS.; wait till this Reform 
Bill uproar abate ; and see, and give our brave little 
Jeannie a sight of this big Babel, which is so altered since 
I saw it last (in 1824-25)!" She came right willingly, 
and had in spite of her ill-health, which did not abate but 
the contrary, an interesting, cheery, and, in spite of our 
poor arrangements, really pleasant winter here. We 
lodged in Ampton Street, Gray's Inn Lane, clean and 
decent pair of rooms, and quiet decent people (the daugh- 
ter is she whom Geraldine speaks of as having, I might 
say, fallen in love with her, wanted to be our servant at 
Craigenputtoch etc.), reduced from wealth to keeping 
lodgings, and prettily resigned to it ; really good people. 
Visitors etc. she had in plenty ; John Mill one of the most 
Interesting, so modest ardent. Ingenuous, ingenious, and 
so very fond of me at that time. Mrs. Basil Montague 
(already a correspondent of hers) now accurately seen, 
was another of the distinguished. Jeffrey, Lord Advo- 
cate, often came on an afternoon ; never could learn his 
road to and from the end of Piccadilly, though I showed 
it him again and again. In the evening, miscellany of 
hers and mine, often dullish, had it not been for her, and 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 399 

the light she had shed on everything. I wrote "Johnson " 
here ; just before going. News of my father's death came 
here : oh, how good and tender she was, and consolatory 
by every kind of art, in those black days ! I remember 
our walk along Holborn forward into the City, and the 
bleeding mood I was in, she wrapping me like the softest 
of bandages : — in the City somew^here, two boys fighting, 
with a ring of grinning blackguards round them ; I rushed 
passionately through, tore the fighters asunder, with some 
passionate rebuke (** in this world full of death "), she on 
my arm ; and everybody silently complied. Nothing was 
wanting in her sympathy, or in the manner of it, as even 
from sincere people there often is. How poor wc were ; 
and yet how rich ! I remember once taking her to Drury 
Lane Theatre (ticket from Playwright Kenny belike) 
along sloppy streets, in a November night (this was be- 
fore my father's sudden death) ; and how paltry the 
equipment looked to me, how perfectly unobjectionable 
to her, who \vas far above equipments and outer garni- 
tures. Of the theatricality itself that night I can remem- 
ber absolutely nothing. Badams, my old Birmingham 
friend and physician, a most inventive, light-hearted, and 
genially gallant kind of man, sadly eclipsed within the last 
five years, ill-married, plunged amid grand mining spec- 
ulations (which were and showed themselves sound, but 
not till they had driven him to drink brandy instead of 
water, and next year to die miserably overwhelmed). 
Badams with his wife was living out at Enfield, in a big 
old rambling sherd of a house among waste gardens ; 
thither I twice or thrice went, much liking the man, but 



400 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

never now getting any good of him ; she once for three 
or four days went with me ; sorry enough days, had not 
we, and especially she, illumined them a little. Charles 
Lamb and his sister came daily once or oftener ; a very 
sorry pair of phenomena. Insuperable proclivity to gin 
in poor old Lamb. His talk contemptibly small, indicat- 
ing wondrous ignorance and shallowness, even when it 
was serious and good-mannered, which it seldom was, 
usually ill-mannered (to a degree), screwed into frosty 
artificialities, ghastly make-believe of wit, in fact more 
like '* diluted insanity " (as I defined it) than anything 
of i^al jocosity, humour, or geniality. A most slender 
fibre of actual worth in that poor Charles, abundantly re- 
cognisable to me as to others, in his better times and 
moods ; but he was cockney to the marrow ; and cock- 
neydom, shouting ^* glorious, marvellous, unparalleled in 
nature ! " all his days had quite bewildered his poor head, 
and churned nearly all the sense out of the poor man. 
He was the leanest of mankind, tiny black breeches but- 
toned to the knee-cap and no further, surmounting spin- 
dle-legs also in black, face and head fineish, black, bony, 
lean, and of a Jew type rather ; in the eyes a kind of 
smoky brightness or confused sharpness ; spoke with a 
stutter ; in walking tottered and shufiied ; emblem of im- 
becility bodily and spiritual (something of real insanity I 
have understood), and yet something too of human, in- 
genuous, pathetic, sportfully much enduring. Poor 
Lamb ! he was infinitely astonished at my wife, and her 
quiet encounter of his too ghastly London wit by a cheer- 
ful native ditto. Adieu, poor Lamb ! He soon after 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 4OI 

died, as did Badams, much more to the sorrow of us 
both. Badams at our last parting (in Ampton Street, 
four or more months after this) burst into tears. " Pressed 
down like putty under feet," we heard him murmuring, 
" and no strength more in me to rise ! " We invited him 
to Craigenputtoch with our best temptations next sum- 
mer, but it was too late ; he answered, almost as with 
tears, '* No, alas ! '' and shortly died. 

We had come home, last days of previous March : 
wild journey by heavy coach, I outside, to Liverpool ; to 
Birmingham it was good, and inn there good, but next 
day (a Sunday, I think) we were quite overloaded ; and 
had our adventures, especially on the street in Liverpool, 
rescuing our luggage after dark. But at Uncle John's, 
again, in Maryland Street, all became so bright. At mid- 
day, somewhere, we dined pleasantly tete-a-tctCy in the 
belly of the coach, from my dear one's stores (to save ex- 
pense doubtless, but the rest of the day had been un- 
pleasantly chaotic) even to me, though from her, as usual, 
there was nothing but patient goodness. Our dinners at 
Maryland Street I still remember, our days generally as 
pleasant, our departure in the Annan steamer, one bright 
sunshiny forenoon, uncle etc. zealously helping and es- 
corting ; sick, sick my poor woman must have been ; but 
she retired out of sight, and would suffer Avith her best 
grace in silence : — ah me, I recollect now a tight, clean 
brandy-barrel she had bought; to *' hold such quantities 
of luggage, and be a water-barrel for the rain at Craigen- 
puttoch ! " how touching to me at this moment. And an 
excellent water-barrel it proved ; the purest tea I ever 
26 



402 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

tasted made from the rain It stored for us. At Whlnniery, 
I remember, brother Ahck and others of them were wait- 
ing to receive us ; there were tears among us (my father 
gone, when we returned) ; she wept bitterly, I recollect, 
her sympathetic heart girdled in much sickness and dis- 
spiritment of her own withal ; but my mother was very 
kind and cordially good and respectful to her always. 
We returned in some days to Craigenputtoch, and were 
again at peace there. Ahck, I think, had by this time 
left ; and a new tenant was there (a peaceable but dull 
stupid fellow ; and our summers and winters for the future 
(i 832-1 834) were lonelier than ever. Good servants too 
were hardly procurable ; difficult anywhere, still more so 
at Craigenputtoch, where the choice was so limited. How- 
ever, we pushed along ; writing still brisk ; " Sartor " 
getting published in Fraser, etc. etc. We had not at first 
any thought of leaving. And indeed would the Review 
Editors but have stood steady (instead of for ever change- 
ful), and domestic service gone on comfortably, perhaps 
we might have continued still a good while. We went 
one winter (1833 ? or 2 ?) to Edinburgh ; the Jeffreys ab- 
sent in official regions. A most dreary contemptible kind 
of element we found Edinburgh to be (partly by accident, 
or baddish behaviour of two individuals, Dr. Irving one 
of them, in reference to his poor kinswoman's furnished 
house) ; a locality and life-element never to be spoken of 
in comparison with London, and the frank friends there. 
To London accordingly, in the course of next winter, and 
its new paltry experiences of house-service etc., we deter- 
mined to go. Edinburgh musr have been in 1833-2 after 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 403 

all ? Our home-coming I remember ; missed the coach in 
Princes Street, waited perdue till following morning ; 
bright weather, but my poor Jeannie so ill by the ride, 
that she could not drive from Thornhill to Templand 
(half a mile), but had to go or stagger hanging on my 
arm, and instantly took to bed with one of her terrible 
headaches. Such headaches I never witnessed in my Hfe ; 
agony of retching (never anything but phlegm) and of 
spasmodic writhing, that would last from twenty-four to 
sixty hours, never the smallest help affordable. Oh, what 
of pain, pain, my poor Jeannie had to bear in this thorny 
pilgrimage of life ; the unwitnessed heroine, or witnessed 
only by me, who never till now see it wholly ! 

She was very hearty for London, when I spoke of it, 
though till then her voice on the subject had never been 
heard. '* Burn our ships ! " she gaily said, one day — i.e. 
dismantle our house ; carry all our furniture with us. 
And accordingly here it still is (mostly all of it her father's 
furniture : whose character of solidly noble is visibly writ- 
ten on it: " respect what is truly made to its purpose; 
detest what is falsely, and have no concern with it ! ") My 
own heart could not have been more emphatic on that 
subject ; honour to him for its worth to me, not as furni- 
ture alone. My writing-table, solid mahogany well-de- 
vised, always handy, yet steady as the rocks, is the best 
I ever saw ; "no book could be too good for being writ- 
ten here," it has often mutely told me. His watch, com- 
missioned by him in Clerkenwell, has measured my time 
for forty years, and would still guide you to the longitude, 
could anybody now take the trouble of completely regu- 



404 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

lating it (old W^hitelaw in Edinburgh, perhaps thirty-five 
years ago, was the last that did). Repeatedly have up- 
holsterers asked, ** Who made these chairs, ma'am ? " In 
cockneydom, nobody in our day ; " unexampled pros- 
perity " makes another kind. Abhorrence, quite equal to 
my own, of cheap and nasty, I have nowhere seen, cer- 
tainly nowhere else seen completely accomplished, as 
poor mine could never manage almost in the least degree 
to be. I\Iy pride, fierce and sore as it might be, was 
never hurt by that furniture of his in the house called 
mine ; on the contrary my piety was touched, and ever 
and anon have this table etc. been a silent solemn sermon 
to me. Oh, shall not victory at last be to the handful of 
brave ; in spite of the rotten multitudinous canaille, who 
seem to inherit all the world and its forces and steel- 
weapons and culinary and stage properties ? Courage ; 
and be true to one another ! 

I remember well my departure (middle of May, 1834), 
she staying to superintend packing and settling ; in gig, 
I, for the last time ; with many thoughts (forgotten there) ; 
brother Alick voluntarily waiting at Shillahill Bridge with 
a fresh horse for me ; night at Scotsbrig, ride to Annan 
(through a kind of May series of slight showers), pretty 
breakfast waiting us in poor good ]\Iary's (ah me, how 
strange is all that now, " ]\Iother, you shall see me once 
yearly, and regularly hear from me, while we live ! " etc. 
etc.); embarkation at Annan foot ; Ben Nelson and James 
Stuart ; our lifting . . . ,' and steaming off, — my two dear 
brothers (Alick and Jamie) standing silent, apart, feeling 

^ Word omitted in MS. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 405 

I well knew what : — self resolute enough, and striving (not 
quite honestly) to feel more so ! Ride to London, all night 
and all day (I think). Trades-Union people out proces- 
sioning (** Help us; what is your Reform Bill else?" 
thought they, and I gravely saluting one body of them, I 
remember, and getting grave response from the leader of 
them). At sight of London I remember humming to my- 
self a ballad-stanza of " Johnnie o' Braidislea " which my 
dear old mother used to sing, 

"For there's seven foresters in yon forest; 
And them I want to see, see, 
And them I want to see (and shoot down) ! 

Lodged at Ampton Street again ; immense stretches 
of walking in search of houses. Camden Town once ; 

Primrose Hill and its bright ' population in the 

distance ; Chelsea ; Leigh Hunt's huggermugger, etc. etc. 
— what is the use of recollecting all that ? 

Her arrival I best of all remember : ah me ! She was 
clear for this poor house (which she gradually, as poverty 
a little withdrew after long years' pushing, has made so 
beautiful and comfortable) in preference to all my other 
samples : and here we spent our two-and-thirty years of 
hard battle against fate ; hard but not quite unvictorious, 
when she left me, as in her car of heaven's fire. My noble 
one ! I say deliberately her part in the stern battle, and 
except myself none knows how stern, was brighter and 
braver than my own. Thanks, darling, for your shining 
words and acts, which were continual in my eyes, and in 

^ Word omitted in MS. 



405 JANE WELSH CiVRLYLE. 

no other mortal's. Worthless I was your divinity, wrapt 
in your perpetual love of me and pride in me, in defiance 
of all men and things. Oh, was it not beautiful, all this 
that I have lost forever ! And I was Thomas the Doubt- 
er, the unhoping ; till now the only half-believing, in my- 
self and my priceless opulences ! At my return from 
Annandale, after " French Revolution," she so cheerily 
recounted to me all the good *' items ; " item after item. 
" Oh it has had a great success, dear ! " — to no purpose ; 
and at length beautifully lost patience with me for my in- 
credulous humour. My life has not wanted at any time 
what I used to call " desperate hope " to all lengths ; but 
of common ** hoping hope " it has had but little ; and has 
been shrouded since youthhood (almost since boyhood, 
for my school-years, at Annan, were very miserable, 
harsh, barren and worse) in continual gloom and grim- 
ness, as of a man set too nakedly versus the devil and all 
men. Could I be easy to live with ? She flickered round 
me like perpetual radiance, and in spite of my glooms and 
my misdoings, would at no moment cease to love me and 
help me. What of bounty too is in heaven ! 

We proceeded all through Belgrave Square hither, 
with our servant, our looser luggage, ourselves and a little 
canary bird (*' Chico," which she had brought with her 
from Craigenputtoch) one hackney coach rumbling on 
with us all. Chico, in Belgrave Square, burst into sing- 
ing, which we took as a good omen. We were all of us 
striving to be cheerful (she needed no effort of striving) ; 
but we ''had burnt our ships," and at bottom the case 
was grave. I do not remember our arriving at this door, 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 407 

but I do the cheerful gipsy Hfe we had here among the 
htter and carpenters for three incipient days. Leigh 
Hunt was in the next street, sending kind ?/ /.'practical 
messages ; in the evenings, I think, personally coming in ; 
we had made acquaintance with him (properly he with us), 
just before leaving in spring 1832. Huggermugger was 
the type of his economics, in all respects, financial and 
other ; but he was himself a pretty man, in clean cotton 
nightgown, and with the airiest kindly style of sparkling 
talk, wanting only wisdom of a sound kind, and true in- 
sight into fact. A great want ! 

I remember going with my dear one (and Eliza Miles, 
the ''daughter" of Ampton Street, as escort), to some 
dim ironmonger's shop, to buy kettles and pans on the 
thriftiest of fair terms. How noble and more than royal 
is the look of that to me now, and of my royal one then. 
California is dross and dirt to the experiences I have had. 
A tinderbox with steel and flint was part of our outfit 
(incredible as it may seem at this date) ; I could myself 
burn rags into tinder, and I have groped my way to the 
kitchen, in sleepless nights, to strike a light for my pipe 
in that manner. Chico got a wife by and by (oh the wit 
there was about that and its sequels), produced two bright 
yellow young ones, who, as soon as they were fledged, 
got out into the trees of the garden, and vanished towards 
swift destruction ; upon which, villain Chico finding his 
poor wife fallen so tattery and ugly, took to pecking a 
hole in her head, pecked it and killed her, by and by end- 
ing his own disreputable life. I had begun " The French 
Revolution" (trees at that time before our window — a tale 



408 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

by these too on her part) : infinitesimal httle matters of 
that kind hovered round me like bright fire-flies, irradi- 
ated by her light ! Breakfast early, was in the back part 
of this ground-floor room, details of gradual intentions 
etc. as to " French Revolution," advices, approval or 
criticism, always beautifully wise, and so soft and loving, 
had they even been foolish ! 

We were not at all unhappy during those three years 
of "French Revolution;" at least she was not; her 
health perhaps being better than mine, which latter was 
in a strangely painful, and as if conflagrated condition to- 
wards the end. She had made the house '* a little Eden 
round her " (so neat and graceful in its simplicity and 
thrifty poverty) ; ** little Paradise round you," those were 
Edward Irving's words to her, on his visit to us ; short 
affectionate visit, the first and the last (October 1834) ; on 
horseback, just about setting off for Glasgow, where he 
died December following. I watched him till at the cor- 
ner of Cook's Grounds he vanished, and we never saw 
him more. Much consulting about him we had always 
had ; a letter to Henry Drummond (about delivering him 
from the fools and fanatics that were agitating him to 
death, as I clearly saw) lay on the mantelpiece here for 
some days in doubt, and was then burnt. Brother, father, 
rational friend, I could not think of, except Henry ; and 
him I had seen only once, not without clear view of his 
unsoundness too. Practically we had long ago had to 
take leave of poor Irving, but we both knew him well, and 
all his brotherhoods to us first and last, and mourned him 
in our hearts as a lost hero. Nobler man I have seen few 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 409 

if any, till the foul gulfs of London pulpit-popularity 
sucked him in, and tragically swallowed him. 

We were beginning to find a friend or two here ; that 
is, an eligible acquaintance, none as yet very dear to us, 
though several brought a certain pleasure. Leigh Hunt 
was here almost nightly, three or four times a week, I 
should reckon ; he came always neatly dressed, was thor- 
oughly courteous, friendly of spirit, and talked like a sing- 
ing bird. Good insight, plenty of a kind of humour too ; 
I remember little warbles in the tones of his fine voice 
which were full of fun and charm. We gave him Scotch 
porridge to supper (''nothing in nature so interesting and 
delightful ") ; she played him Scotch tunes ; a man he 
to understand and feel them v/ell. His talk was often 
enough (perhaps at first oftenest), literary, biographical, 
autobiographical, wandering into criticism, reform of soci- 
ety, progress, etc. etc., on which latter points he gradu- 
ally found me very shocking (I believe — so fatal to his 
rose-coloured visions on the subject). An innocent-heart- 
ed, but misguided, in fact rather foolish, unpractical and 
often much suffering man. John Mill was another steady 
visitor (had by this time introduced his Mrs. Taylor too, a 
very will-o'-wispish " iridescence" of a creature ; meaning 
nothing bad either). She at first considered my Jane to 
be a rustic spirit fit for rather tutoring and twirling about 
when the humour took her ; but got taught better (to her 
lasting memory) before long. Mill was very useful about 
" French Revolution ; " lent me all his books, which were 
quite a collection on that subject ; gave me, frankly, 
clearly, and with zeal, all his better knowledge than my 



410 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

own (which was pretty frequently of use in this or the 
other detail) ; being full of eagerness for such an advocate 
in that cause as he felt I should be. His evenings here 
were sensibly agreeable for most part. Talk rather win- 
try C'sawdustish," as old Sterling once called it), but 
always well-informed and sincere. The Mrs. Taylor busi- 
ness was becoming more and more of questionable benefit 
to him (we could see), but on that subject we were strictly 
silent, and he was pretty still. For several years he came 
hither, and walked wath me every Sunday. Dialogues 
fallen all dim, except that they were never in the least ge- 
nial to me, and that I took them as one would wine where 
no nectar is to be had, or even thin ale where no wine. 
Her view of him was very kindly, though precisely to the 
same effect. How well do I still remember that night 
when he came to tell us, pale as Hector's ghost, that my 
unfortunate first volume was burnt. It was like half sen- 
tence of death to us both, and we had to pretend to take 
it lightly, so dismal and ghastly was his horror at it, and 
try to talk of other matters. He stayed three mortal 
hours or so ; his departure quite a relief to us. Oh, the 
burst of sympathy my poor darling then gave me, flinging 
her arms round my neck, and openly lamenting, condoHng, 
and encouraging like a nobler second self! Under heaven 
is nothing beautifuller. We sat talking till late; "shall 
be written again," my fixed word and resolution to her. 
Which proved to be such a task as I never tried before or 
since. I wrote out ** Feast of Pikes" (vol. ii.), and then 
went at it. Found it fairly impossible for about a fort- 
night ; passed three weeks (reading Marryat's novels), 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 41I 

tried, cautIou&-cautiously, as on ice paper-thin, once 
more ; and in short had a job more Hke breaking my 
heart than any other in my experience. Jeannie, alone 
of beings, burnt hke a steady lamp beside me. I forget 
how much of money we still had. I think there was at 
hrst something like 300/., perhaps 280/., to front London 
with. Nor can I in the least remember where we had 
gathered such a sum, except that it was our own, no part 
of it borrowed or given us by anybody. " Fit to last 
till ' French Revolution ' is ready ! " and she had no mis- 
givings at all. Mill was penitently liberal ; sent me 200/. 
(in a day or two), of which I kept lOO/. (actual cost of 
house while I had written burnt volume) ; upon which he 
bought me ** Biographie Universelle," which I got bound, 
and still have. Wish I could find a way of getting the now 
much macerated, changed, and fanaticised '' John Stuart 
Mill " to take that 100/. back ; but I fear there is no way. 
How my incomparable one contrived to beat out these 
exiguous resources into covering the appointed space I 
cannot now see, nor did I then know ; but in the like of 
that, as in her other tasks, she was silently successful 
always, and never, that I saw, had a misgiving about suc- 
cess. There would be some trifling increments from 
" Fraser's Magazine," perhaps (" Diamond Necklace," etc. 
were probably of those years) ; but the guess stated above 
is the nearest I can now come to, and I don't think is in 
defect of the actuality. I was very diligent, very desper- 
ate (*' desperate hope ; ") wrote my two (folio) pages (per- 
haps four or five of print) day by day : then about two 
P.M. walked out ; always heavy laden, grim of mood, 



412 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

sometimes with a feeling (not rebellious or impious against 
God Most High), but otherwise too similar to Satan's 
stepping the burning marie. Some conviction I had that 
the book was worth something, and pretty constant per- 
suasion that it was not I that could make it better. Once 
or twice among the flood of equipages at Hyde Park Cor- 
ner, I recollect sternly thinking, " Yes ; and perhaps none 
of you could do what I am at! " But generally my feel- 
ing was " I shall finish this book, throw it at your feet, 
buy a rifle and spade, and withdraw to the Transatlantic 
Wilderness, far from human beggaries and basenesses ! " 
This had a kind of comfort to me ; yet I always knew 
too, in the background, that this would not practically do. 
In short, my nervous system had got dreadfully irri- 
tated and inflamed before I quite ended, and my desire 
was intense, beyond words, to have done with it. The last 
paragraph I well remember writing upstairs in the draw- 
ing-room that now is, which was then my writing-room ; 
beside her there and in a grey evening (summer I sup- 
pose), soon after tea (perhaps) thereupon, with her dear 
blessing on me, going out to walk. I had said before go- 
ing out, ** What they will do with this book, none knows, 
my Jeannie, lass ; but they have not had, for a two hun- 
dred years, any book that came more truly from a man's 
very heart, and so let them trample it under foot and hoof 
as they see best ! " ** Pooh, pooh ! they cannot trample 
that ! " she would cheerily answer ; for her own approval 
(I think she had read always regularly behind me) espe- 
cially in vol. iii., was strong and decided. 

We knew the Sterhngs by this time, John, and all of 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 413 

them ; old Sterling very often here. Knew Henry Tay- 
lor etc., the Wilsons of Eccleston Street, Rev. Mr. Dunn, 
etc. etc.; and the waste wilderness of London was be- 
coming a peopled garden to us, in some measure, espe- 
cially to her, who had a frank welcome to every sort of 
worth and even kindly singularity in her fellow-creatures, 
such as I could at no time rival. 

Sprinklings of foreigners, "political refugees," had 
already begun to come about us ; to me seldom of any 
interest, except for the foreign instruction to be gathered 
from them (if any), and the curiosity attached to their 
foreign ways. Only two of them had the least charm to 
me as men : Mazzini, whom I remember, Mr. Taylor, 
Mrs, Taylor's (ultimately Mrs. Mill's) then husband, an 
innocent dull good man, brought in to me one evening ; 
and Godefroi Cavaignac, whom my Jane had met some- 
where, and thought worth inviting. Mazzini I once or 
twice talked with ; rccognisably a most valiant, faithful, 
considerably gifted and noble soul, but hopelessly given 
up to his republicanisms, his " Progress," and other Rous- 
seau fanaticism, for which I had at no time the least cre- 
dence, or any considerable respect amid my pity. We 
soon tired of one another, Mazzini and I, and he fell 
mainly to her share ; off and on, for a good many years, 
yielding her the charm of a sincere mutual esteem, and 
withal a good deal of occasional amusement from Maz- 
zini's curious bits of exile London and foreign life, and 
his singular Italian-English modes of locution now and 
then. For example, Petrucci having quenched his own 
fiery chimney one day, and escaped the fine (as he hoped). 



414 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

" there came to pass a sweep " with finer nose in the soli- 
tary street, who involved him again. Or, "Jf^, niio caro, 
noil v'e ci un morto ! " which, I see, she has copied into 
her poor little book of notabilia/ Her reports of these 
things to me, as we sat at breakfast or otherwise, had a 
tinkle of the finest mirth in them, and in short a beauty 
and felicity I have never seen surpassed. Ah me ! ah 
me ! whither fled ? 

Cavaignac was considerably more interesting to both 
of us. A fine Bayard soul (with figure to correspond), a 
man full of seriousness and of genial gaiety Avithal ; of 
really fine faculties and of a pohteness (especially towards 
women) which was curiously elaborated into punctilious- 
ness yet sprang everywhere from frank nature. A man 
very pleasant to converse with, walk with, or see drop in 
on an evening, and lead you or follow )'"ou far and wide 
on the world of intellect and humanly recorded fact. A 
Republican to the bone, but a "Bayard" in that vesture 
(if only Bayard had wit and fancy at command). We 
had many dialogues while '' French Revolution " struggled 
through its last two volumes ; Cavaignac freely discussing 
with me, accepting kindly my innumerable dissents from 
him, and on the whole elucidating many little points to 
me. Punctually on \h.^joitr de Ian came some little gift 
to her, frugal yet elegant ; and I have heard him say with 
mantling joyous humour overspreading that sternly sad 

' Explained in this book. An undertaker came one dark winter morning 
by mistake to Mazzini's house to enquire for the corpse. Mazzini, who an- 
swered the bell himself, said, "But, my dear" (an Italian would say "my 
dear " to a hangman), " there is not here a dead." 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 415 

French face, " Vous ii'ctes pas Ecossaise, Madame ; desoi'- 
mais voiis serez Francaise ! " I think he must have left 
us in 1843 ; he and I rode, one summer forenoon, to 
Richmond and back (some old Bonapartist colonel mar- 
ried out there, dull ignorant loud fellow to my feeling) ; 
country was beautiful, air balmy, ride altogether ditto 
ditto. I don't remember speaking with him again ; " go- 
ing to Paris this week " or so, he (on unconditional am- 
nesty, not on conditional like all the others). He returned 
once, or indeed twice, during the three years he still lived ; 
but I was from home the last time, both of us the first (at 
Newby Cottage, Annan, oh dear !) and I saw him no 
more. The younger brother (''President" in 1849 etc.) 
I had often heard of from him, and learned to esteem on 
evidence given, but never saw. I take him to have been 
a second Godefroi probably, with less gift of social utter- 
ance, but with a soldier's breeding in return. 

One autumn, and perhaps another, I recollect her 
making a tour with the elder Sterling (Thunderer and 
wife), which, in spite of the hardships to one so delicate, 
she rather enjoyed. Thunderer she had at her apron- 
string, and brought many a comical pirouette out of him 
from time to time. Good Mrs. S. really loved her, and 
vice versa ; a luminous household circle that to us : as 
may be seen in '' Life of Sterling," more at large. 

Of money from " French Revolution" I had here as 
yet got absolutely nothing ; Emerson in America, by an 
edition of his there, sent me 150/. ("pathetic ! " was her 
fine word about it, " but never mind, dear ") ; after some 
three years grateful England (through poor scrubby but 



4l6 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

correctly arithmetical Fraser) lOo/. ; and I don't remember 
when, some similar munificence ; but I now (and indeed 
not till recent years do I) see it had been, as she called it, 
*' a great success," and greatish of its kind. Money I did 
get somewhere honestly, articles in *' Fraser," in poor 
Mill's (considerably hidebound) "London Review;" 
''Edinburgh" I think was out for me before this time. 
" London Review " was at last due to the charitable faith 
of young Sir William Molesworth, a poorish narrow crea- 
ture, but an ardent believer in Mill Pere (James) and Mill 
Fils. " How much will your Review take to launch it 
then ? " asked he (all other Radical believers being so 
close of fist). "Say 4,000/.," answered Mill. "Here, 
then," writing a cheque for that amount, rejoined the 
other. My private (altogether private) feehng, I remem- 
ber, was, that they could, with profit, have employed me 
much more extensively in it ; perhaps even (though of 
this I was candid enough to doubt) made me editor of it ; 
let me try it for a couple of years ; worse I could not have 
succeeded than poor Mill himself did as editor (sawdust 
to the masthead, and a croakery of crawling things, in- 
stead of a speaking by men) ; but I whispered to none 
but her the least hint of all this ; and oh, how glad am I 
now, and for long years back, that apparently nothing of 
it ever came to the thoughts or the dreams of Mill and 
Co. ! For I should surely have accepted of it, had the 
terms been at all tolerable. I had plenty of Radicalism, 
and have, and to all appearance shall have ; but the oppo- 
site hemisphere (which never was wanting either, nor will 
be, as it miserably is in Mill and Co.) had not yet found 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 417 

itself summoned by the trumpet of time and his events 
(1848; study of OHver, etc.) into practical emergence, 
and emphasis and prominence as now. *' 111 luck," take 
it quietly ; you never are sure but it may be good and 
the best. 

Our main revenue three or four (?) years now was 
lectures; in Edward Street, Portman Square, the only 
free room there was ; earnestly forwarded by Miss and 
Thomas Wilson, of Eccleston Street (who still hve and 
are good), by Miss Martineau, by Henry Taylor, Freder- 
ick Elliot, etc. etc. Brought in, on the average, perhaps 
200/., for a month's labour ; first of them must have been 
in 1838, I think; Willis's Rooms, this. *' Detestable mix- 
ture of prophecy and play-actorism," as I sorrowfully de- 
fined it ; nothing could well be hatefuUer to me ; but I 
was obliged. And she, oh she was my angel, and un- 
wearied helper and comforter in all that ; how we drove 
together, we poor two, to our place of execution ; she 
with a little drop of brandy to give me at the very last, 
and shone round me like a bright aureola, when all else 
was black and chaos ! God reward thee, dear one ! now 
when I cannot even own my debt. Oh, why do we delay 
so much, till death makes it impossible ? And don't I 
continue it still with others ? Fools, fools ! we forget that 
it has to end ; so this has ended, and it is such an aston- 
ishment to me ; so sternly undeniable, yet as it were 
incredible ! 

It must have been in this 1838 that her mother first 
came to see us here. I remember giving each of them a 
sovereign, from a pocketful of odd which I had brought 



41 8 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

home, — greatly to satisfaction especially of Mrs, Welsh, 
who I doubt not bought something pretty and symbolic 
with it. She came perhaps three times ; on one of the 
later times was that of the " one soiree," with the wax- 
candles on mother's part — and subsequent remorse on 
daughter's ! " Burn these last two on the night when I lie 
dead ! " Like a stroke of lightning this has gone through 
my heart, cutting and yet healing. Sacred be the name 
of it; its praise silent. Did I elsewhere meet in the world 
a soul so direct from the Empyrean ? My dear old 
mother was perhaps equally pious, in the Roman sense, 
in the British she w^as much more so ; but starry flashes 
of this kind she had not — from her education etc., could 
not. 

By this time we were getting noticed by select indi- 
viduals of the Aristocracy ; and were what is called 
*' rather rising in society." Ambition that way my Jane 
never had ; but she took it always as a something of 
honour done to me, and had her various bits of satisfac- 
tion in it. The Spring-Rices (Lords Monteagle after- 
wards) were probably the first of their class that ever 
asked me out as a distinguished thing. I remember their 
flunkey arriving here with an express while w^e were at 
dinner ; I remember, too, their soiree itself in Downing 
Street, and the KaXol and tcdXal (as I called them) with 
their state and their effulgences, as something new and 
entertaining to me. The Stanleys (of Alderley), through 
the Bullers, we had long since known, and still know ; but 
that I suppose was still mostly theoretic, — or perhaps I 
had dined there, and seen the Hollands (Lord and Lady), 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 419 

the etc. (as I certainly did ultimately), but not been 
judged eligible, or both catchable and eligible? To me 
I can recollect (except what of snob ambition there might 
be in me, which I hope was not very much, though for 
certain it was not quite wanting either !) there was noth- 
ing of charm in any of them ; old Lady Holland I viewed 
even with aversion, as a kind of hungry *' ornamented 
witch," looking over at me with merely carnivorous views 
(and always questioning her Dr. Allen when I said any- 
thing) ; nor was it till years after (husband, Allen, etc. 
all dead) that I discovered remains of beauty in her, a 
pathetic situation, and distinguished qualities. My Jane 
I think knew still less of her ; in her house neither my 
Jane nor I ever was. At Marshall's (millionaire of 
Leeds, and an excellent man, who much esteemed me, 
and once gave me a horse for health's sake) we had am- 
ple assemblages, shining enough in their kind ; — but she, 
I somehow think, probably for saving the cost of " fly" 
(oh my queen, mine and a true one !), was not so often 
there as L On the whole, that too was a thing to be 
gone through in our career ; and it had its bits of bene- 
fits, bits of instructions, etc. etc.; but also its temptations, 
intricacies, tendencies to vanity etc., to waste of time and 
faculty ; and in a better sphere of arrangement, would 
have been a "game not worth the candle." Certain of 
the Aristocracy, however, did seem to me still very no- 
ble ; and, with due limitation of the grossly worthless 
(none of whom had we to do with), I should vote at pres- 
ent that, of classes known to me in England, the Aristoc- 
racy (with its perfection of human politeness, its continual 



420 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

grace of bearing and of acting, steadfast "honour," light 
address and cheery stoicism), if you see well into it, is 
actually yet the best of English classes. Deep in it we 
never were, promenaders on the shore rather ; but I have 
known it too, and formed deliberate judgment as above. 
My dear one in theory did not go so far (I think) in that' 
direction, — in fact was not at the pains to form much 
•'theory;" but no eye in the world was quicker than 
hers for individual specimens ; — and to the last she had a 
great pleasure in consorting more or less with the select 
of these ; Lady William Russell, Dowager Lady Sand- 
wich, . Lady etc. etc. (and not in over-quantity). I re- 
member at first sight of the first Lady Ashburton (who 
was far from regularly beautiful, but was probably the 
chief of all these great ladies), she said of her to me, 
** Something in her like a heathen goddess ! " which was 
a true reading, and in a case not plain at all, but oftener 
mistaken than rightly taken. 

Our first visit to Addiscombe together, a bright sum- 
mer Sunday ; we walked (thrift, I daresay, ah me ! from 
the near railway station ; and my poor Jeannie grew very 
tired and disheartened, though nothing ill came) ; I had 
been there several times, and she had seen the lady here 
(and called her *' heathen goddess " to me). This time I 
had at once joined the company under the shady trees, 
on their beautiful lawn ; and my little woman, in few 
minutes, her dress all adjusted, came stepping out, round 
the corner of the house, — with such a look of lovely inno- 
cency, modesty, ingenuousness, gracefully suppressed 
timidity, and radiancy of native cleverness, intelligence, 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 421 

and dignity, towards the great ladies and great gentle- 
men ; it seems to me at this moment, I have never seen 
a more beautiful expression of a human face. Oh my 
dearest ; my dearest that cannot now know how dear ! 
There are glimpses of heaven too given us on this earth, 
though sorely drowned in terrestrial vulgarities, and sorely 
" flamed-on from the hell beneath " too. This must have 
been about 1843 or so ? 

A year or two before, going to see her mother, she 
had landed in total wreck of sea-sickness (miserable 
always at sea, but had taken it as cheapest doubtless), 
and been brought up almost speechless, and set down at 
the Queensberry Arms Inn, Annan. Having no maid, 
no sign but of trouble and (unprofitable) ladyhood, they 
took her to a remote bedroom, and left her to her solitary 
shifts there. Very painful to me, yet beautiful and with 
a noble pathos in it, to look back upon (from her narra- 
tive of it) here and now ! How Mary, my poor but ever 
faithful " Sister Mary," came to her (on notice), her re- 
sources few, but her heart overflow^ing ; could hardly get 
admittance to the flunkey house of entertainment at all ; 
got it, however, had a " pint of sherry" with her, had 
this and that, and perhaps on the third day, got her 
released from the base place ; of which that is my main 
recollection now, when I chance to pass it, in its now dim 
enough condition. Perhaps this was about 1840; Mary's 
husband (now farmer at the Gill, not a clever man, but a 
diligent and good-natured) was then a carter with two 
horses in Annan, gradually becoming unable to live in 
that poor capacity there. They had both been Craigen- 



4-- TAXE WELSH CARLYLE. 

puttoch figures ; and might have been most sordid to my 
bright darhng, but never were at all ; gradually far from 
it, Mar}' at least. She loved Mary for her kind-hearted- 
ness ; admired and respected her skill and industry in 
domestic management of all kinds ; and often contrasted 
to me her perfect talent in that way, compared to sister 
Jean's, who intellectually was far the superior (and had 
once been her own pupil and protegee, about the time 
we left Comley Bank ; always very kind and grateful to 
her since, too, but never such a favourite as the other). 
Mar\^'s cottage was well known to me too, as I came 
home by the steamer, on my visits, and was often riding 
down to bathe etc. These visits, ** once a year to my 
mother," were pretty faithfully paid ; and did my heart 
always some good ; but for the rest were unpleasantly 
chaotic (especially when my poor pld mother, worthiest 
and dearest of simple hearts, became incapable of man- 
agement by her own strength, and of almost all enjoy- 
ment even from me). I persisted in them to the last, as 
did my woman ; but I think they comprised for both of 
us (such skinless creatures), in respect of outward physi- 
cal hardship, an amount larger than all the other items 
of our then life put together. 

How well I remember the dismal evening, when we 
had got word of her mother's dangerous crisis of illness 
a stroke, in fact, which ended it i ; and her wildly impres- 
sive look, laden as if with resolution, affection, and pro- 
phetic woe, while she sate in the railway carriage and 
rolled away from me into the dark. " Poor, poor Jean- 
nie ! " thought I ; and yet my sympathy how paltry and 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 423 

imperfect was it to what hers would have been for me ! 
Stony-hearted ; shame on me ! She was stopped at 
Liverpool by news of the worst ; I found her sharply 
wretched, on my following, and had a strange two or 
three months, slowly settling everything at Templand ; 
the *' last country spring," and my first for many long 
years. Bright, sad, solitary (letters from Lockhart etc.), 
nocturnal mountain heather burning, by day the courses 
of the hail-storms from the mountains, how they came 
pouring down their respective valleys, deluge-like, and 
blotted out the sunshine etc., spring of 1843 or 2 ? 

I find it was in 1 842 (February 20) that my poor 
mother-in-law died. Wild night for me from Liverpool, 
through Dumfries (sister Jean out with tea, etc.), arrival 
at waste Templand (only John Welsh etc. there ; funeral 
quite over) ; all this and the lonesome, sad, but not un- 
blessed three months almost which I spent there, is still 
vividly in my mind. I was for trying to keep Templand 
once, as a summer refuge for us, one of the most pictur- 
esque of locations ; but her filial heart repelled the notion ; 
and I have never seen more than the chimney-tops of 
Templand since. Her grief, at my return and for months 
afterwards, was still poignant, constant ; and oh how in- 
ferior my sympathy with her to what hers would have 
been with me ; woe on my dull hard ways in comparison ! 
To her mother she had been the kindest of daughters ; 
life-rent of Craigenputtoch settled frankly on her, and such 
effort to make it practically good to the letter when need- 
ful. I recollect one gallop of hers, which Gcraldine has 
not mentioned, gallop from Craigenputtoch to Dumfries 



424 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

Bank, and thence to Templand at a stretch, with the half- 
year's rent, which oiir procrastinating brother Ahck sel- 
dom could or would be punctual with. (Ah me ! gallop 
which pierces my heart at this moment, and clothes my 
darling with a sad radiancy to me) ; but she had many re- 
morses, and indeed had been obliged to have manifold 
little collisions with her fine high-minded, but often fanci- 
ful and fitful mother, who was always a beauty, too, and 
had whims and thin-skinned ways, distasteful enough to 
such a daughter. All which, in cruel aggravation (for all 
were really small, and had been ridiculous rather than 
deep or. important), now came remorsefully to mind, and 
many of them, I doubt not, stayed. 

Craigenputtoch lapsed to her in 1842, therefore ; to me 
she had left the fee-simple of it by will (in 1824, two years 
before our marriage), as I remember she once told me 
thereabouts, and never but once. Will found, the other 
day, after some difficulty, since her own departure, and 
the death of any Welsh to whom she could have wished 
me to bequeath it. To my kindred it has no relation, nor 
shall it go to them ; it is much a problem with me how I 
shall leave it settled (** Bursaries for Edinburgh College," 
or what were best ?) after my poor interest in it is over. 
Considerably a problem ; and what her wish in it would 
have actually been ? *' Bursaries " had come into my own 
head, when we heard that poor final young Welsh was in 
consumption, but to her I never mentioned it. ("Wait 
till the young man's decease do suggest it ? ") and now I 
have only hypothesis and guess. She never liked to 
speak of the thing, even on question, which hardly once 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 425 

or twice ever rose ; and except on question, a stone was 
not more silent. Beautiful queenlike woman, I did admire 
her complete perfection on this head of the actual 
" dowry " she had now brought, 200/. yearly or so, 
which to us was a highly considerable sum, and how she 
absolutely ignored it, and as it were had not done it at 
all. Once or so I can dimly remember telling her as 
much (thank God I did so), to which she answered scarce- 
ly by a look, and certainly without word, except perhaps 
"Tut!" 

Thus from this date onward we were a little richer, 
easier in circumstances ; and the pinch of poverty, which 
had been relaxing latterly, changed itself into a gentle 
pressure, or into a limit and little more. We did not 
change our habits in any point, but the grim collar round 
my neck was sensibly slackened. Slackened, not re- 
moved at all, for almost twenty years yet. My books 
were not, nor ever will be *' popular," productive of 
money to any but a contemptible degree. I had lost by 
the death of Bookseller Fraser and change to Chapman 
and Hall ; in short to judge by the running after me by 
owls of Minerva in those times, and then to hear what 
day's wages my books brought me, would have astonished 
the owl mind. I do not think my literary income was 
above 200/. a year in those decades, in spite of my con- 
tinual diligence day by day. " Cromwell " I must have 
written, I think, in 1844, but for four years prior it had 
been a continual toil and misery to me. I forget what 
was the price of " Cromwell," greater considerably than in 
any previous case, but the annual income was still some- 



426 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

what as above. I had always 200/. or 300/. in bank, and 
continually forgot all about money. My darling rolled 
it all over upon me, and not one straw about it ; only 
asked for assurance or promissory engagement from me. 
" How little, then ? " and never failed to make it liberally 
and handsomely do. Honour to her (beyond the owner- 
ship of California, I say now), and thanks to poverty that 
showed me how noble, worshipful, and dear she was. 

In 1849, after an interval of deep gloom and bottom- 
less dubitation, came " Latter-Day Pamphlets," which 
unpleasantly astonished everybody, set the world upon 
the strangest suppositions (" Carlyle got deep into 
whisky I " said some , ruined my " reputation " (according 
to the friendliest voices, and, in effect, divided me alto- 
gether from the mob of *' Progress-of-the-species " and 
other vulgar), but were a great relief to my own con- 
science as a faithful citizen, and have been ever since. 
My darling gaily approved, and we left the thing to take 
its own sweet will, with great indifferency and loyalty on 
our part. This did not help our incomings ; in fact I 
suppose it effectually hindered, and has done so till quite 
recently, any " progress " of ours in that desirable direc- 
tion, though I did not find that the small steady sale of 
my books was sensibly altered from year to year, but 
quietly stood where it used to be. Chapman (hard-fisted 
cautious bibliographer) would not, for about ten years 
farther, go into any edition of my '' Collected Works." I 
did once transiently propose it, once only, and remember 
being sometimes privately a good deal sulky towards the 
poor man for his judgment on that matter, though decided 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 42/ 

to leave him strictly to his own light in regard to it, and 
indeed to avoid him altogether when I had not clear busi- 
ness with him. The '* recent return of popularity greater 
than ever" which I hear of, seems due alone to that late 
Edinburgh affair ; especially to the Edinburgh '* address," 
and affords new proof of the singularly dark and feeble 
condition of " public judgment" at this time. No idea, 
or shadow of an idea, is in that address, but what had 
been set forth by me tens of times before, and the poor 
gaping sea of Prurient Blockheadism receives it as a kind 
of inspired revelation, and runs to buy my books (it is said) 
now when I have got quite done with their buying or re- 
fusing to buy. If they would give me io,ooo/. a year and 
bray unanimously their hosannahs heaven-high for the 
rest of my life, who now would there be to get the small- 
est joy or profit from it ? To me I. feel as if it would be 
a silent sorrow rather, and would bring me painful retro- 
spections, nothing else ! On the whole, I feel often as if 
poor England had really done its very kindest to me, 
after all. Friends not a few I do at last begin to see that 
I have had all along, and these have all, or all but two or 
three, been decorously silent ; enemies I cannot strictly 
find that I have had any (only blind blockheads running 
athwart me on their own errand) ; and as for the speaking 
and criticising multitude, who regulate the paying ditto, 
I perceive that their labours on me have had a two-fold 
result : i°. that, after so much nonsense said in all dia- 
lects, so very little sense or real understanding of the 
matter, I have arrived at a point of indifferency towards 
all that, which is really very desirable to a human soul 



428 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

that will do well ; and 2°. that, in regard to money, and 
payment, etc., in the money kind, it is essentially the 
same, to a degree which, under both heads (if it were safe 
for me to estimate it), I should say was really a far nearer 
than common approach to completeness. And whidi, 
under both heads, so far as it is complete, means victory, 
and the very highest kind of " success ! " Thanks to poor 
anarchic crippled and bewildered England, then ; hasn't 
it done ''its very best" for me, under disguised forms, 
and seeming occasionally to do its worst ? Enough of all 
that ; I had to say only that my dear little helpmate, in 
regard to these things also, has been throughout as one 
sent from heaven to me. Never for a moment did she 
take to blaming England or the world on my behalf; 
rather to quizzing my despondencies (if any on that head), 
and the grotesque stupidities of England and the world. 
She cared little about criticisms of me, good or bad, but 
I have known her read, when such came to hand, the 
unfriendliest specimens with real amusement, if their stu- 
pidity was of the readable or amusing kind to bystanders. 
Her opinion of me was curiously unalterable from the first. 
In Edinburgh, for example, in 1826 still. Bookseller Tait 
(a foolish goosey, innocent but very vulgar kind of mor- 
tal), ** Oh, Mrs. Carlyle, fine criticism in the * Scotsman ; ' 
you will find it at, I think you will find it at — " '* But 
what good will it do me ? " answered Mrs. Carlyle, with 
great good humour, to the miraculous collapse of Tait, 
who stood (I dare say) with eyes staring ! 

In 1845, late autumn, I was first at the Grange for a 
few days (doing d'Ewes's ''Election to the Long Parlia- 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 429 

merit," I recollect) ; she with me the next year, I think ; 
and there, or at Addiscombe, Alverstoke, Bath House, 
saw on frequent enough occasions, for twelve years com- 
ing, or indeed for nineteen (till the second Lord Ashbur- 
ton's death), the choicest specimens of English aristocracy; 
and had no difficulty in living with them on free and alto- 
gether human terms, and learning from them by degrees 
whatever they had to teach us. Something actually, 
though perhaps not very much, and surely not the best. 
To me, I should say, more than to her, came what lessons 
there were. Human friendships we also had, and she too 
was a favourite with the better kind. Lord Lansdowne, 
for example, had at last discovered what she was ; not 
without some amazement in his old retrospective mind, I 
dare say ! But to her the charm of such circles was at all 
times insignificant ; human was what she looked at, and 
what she was, in all circles. Ay de mi ! it is a mingled yarn, 
all that of our " Aristocratic " history, and I need not 
enter on it here. One evening, at Bath House, I saw her 
in a grand soiree, softly step up, and (unnoticed as she 
thought, by anybody), kiss the old Duke of Wellington's 
shoulder ! That perhaps was one of the prettiest things I 
ever saw there. Duke was then very old, and hitched lan- 
guidly about, speaking only when spoken to, some '' wow- 
wow," which perhaps had little meaning in it; he had on 
his Garter order, his gold-buckle stock, and was very clean 
and trim ; but except making appearance in certain even- 
ing parties, half an hour in each, perhaps hardly knew 
what he was doing. From Bath House we saw his funeral 
procession, a while after ; and, to our disgust, In one of 



430 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

the mourning coaches, some official or dignitary reading a 
newspaper. The hearse (seventeen tons of bronze), the 
arrangements generally, were vulgar and disgusting ; but 
the fact itself impressed everybody ; the street rows all 
silently doffed hat as the body passed ; and London, alto- 
gether, seemed to be holding its breath. A dim, almost 
wet kind of day ; adieu, adieu ! With Wellington 1 don't 
think either of us had ever spoken ; though we both es- 
teemed him heartily. I had known his face for nearly thirty 
years ; he also, I think, had grown to know mine, as that 
of somebody who wished him well ; not otherwise, I dare 
say, or the proprietor's name at all ; but I have seen him 
gaze at me a little as we passed on the streets. To speak 
to him, with my notions of his ways of thinking, and of his 
articulate endowments, was not among my longings. I 
went once to the House of Lords, expressly to hear the 
sound of his voice, and so complete my little private phy- 
siognomical portrait of him ; a fine aquiline voice, I found 
it, quite like the face of him ; and got a great instruction 
and lesson, which has stayed with me, out of his little 
speech itself (Lord Ellenborough's '' Gates of Somnauth " 
the subject, about which I cared nothing) ; speech of the 
most haggly, hawky, pinched and meagre kind, so far as 
utterance and *' eloquence " went ; but potent for convic-' 
tion beyond any other ; nay, I may say, quite exclusively 
of all the others that night, which w^ere mere '' melodious 
wind " to me (Brougham's, Derby's, etc. etc.), while this 
hitching, stunted, haggling discourse of ten or thirteen 
minutes had made the Duke's opinion completely mine 
too. I thought of O. Cromwell withal, and have often 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 43 1 

since, oftener than ever before, said to myself, " Is not 
this (to make your opinion mine) the aim of all * eloquence,' 
rhetoric, and Demosthenic artillery practice ? " And what 
is it good for ? Fools ! get a true insight and belief of 
your own as to the matter ; that is the way to get your 
belief into me, and it is the only w^ay ! 

One of the days while I was first at the Grange (in 
1845) w^as John Sterling's death-day. I had well marked 
it, with a sad almost remorseful contrast ; we were at St. 
Cross and Winchester Cathedral that day. I think my 
wife's latest favourites, and in a sense friends and inti- 
mates, among the aristocracy were the old Dowager Lady 
Sandwich (died about four years ago, or three), young 
Lady Lothian (recent acquaintance), and the (Dowager) 
Lady William Russell, whom I think she had something 
of real love to, and in a growing condition for the last two 
or three years. This is a clever, high-mannered, massive- 
minded old lady, now seventy-two ; admirable to me, 
this good while, as a finished piece of social art, but 
hardly otherwise much. My poor little wife ! what a 
capacity of liking, of sympathy, of giving and getting 
pleasure, was in her heart, to the very last, compared 
with my gaunt mournful darkness in that respect. This 
Lady William wrote many notes etc. in these past seven 
weeks ; I was really sorry for her withal ; and, with an 
effort, near a month ago, went and saw her. Alas ! she 
had nothing to speak to me of, but of letters received 
(such " sympathy " from Rome, from Vienna, by persons 
I knew not, or knew to be fools ; as if this could have 
been of comfort to me !) — and I could perceive the real 



432 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

*' affection" (to whatever extent) had been mostly on my 
poor darling's side, the alone opulent in that kind ! 
" Pleasant at our little bits of artistic dinners" (the lady 
seemed to feel); "a sweet orange, which has dropped 
from one's hand into the dust ! " I came away, not 
angry (oh no), but full of miserable sorrowful feelings of 
the poverty of life ; and have not since been back. 

She liked London constantly, and stood in defence of 
it against me and my atrabilious censures of it, never had 
for herself the least wish to quit it again, though I was 
often talking of that, and her practice would have been 
loyal compliance for my behoof. I well remember my 
first walking her up to Hyde Park Corner in the summer 
evening, and her fine interest in everything. At the cor- 
ner of the Green Park I found something for her to sit on ; 
" Hah, there is John Mill coming ! " I said, and her joy- 
ful ingenuous blush is still very beautiful to me. The 
good child ! It did not prove to be Mill (whom she knew 
since 183 1, and liked for my sake); but probably I showed 
her the Duke of Wellington, whom one often used to see 
there, striding deliberately along, as if home from his 
work, about that hour ; him (I almost rather think, that 
same evening), and at any rate, other figures of distinc- 
tion or notoriety. And we said to one another, " How 
strange to be in big London here ; isn't it ? " Our pur- 
chase of household kettles and saucepans etc. in the mean 
ironmongery, so noble in its poverty and loyalty on her 
part, is sad and infinitely lovely to me at this moment. 

We had plenty of " company " from the very first ; 
John Mill, down from Kensington once a week or oftener ; 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 433 

the '* Mrs. Austin " of those days, so popular and almost 
famous, on such exiguous basis (translations from the 
German, rather poorly some, and of original nothing that 
rose far above the rank of twaddle) ; '^ fenime alors ce- 
Icbre,'' as we used to term the phenomenon, parodying 
some phrase I had found in Thiers. Mrs. A. affected 
much sisterhood with us (affected mainly, though in kind 
wise), and was a cheery, sanguine, and generally accepta- 
ble member of society, — already up to the Marquis of 
Lansdowne (in a slight sense), much more to all the 
Radical officials and notables ; Charles Buller, Sir W. 
Molesworth, etc. etc. of '' alorsT She still lives, this 
Mrs. A., in quiet though eclipsed condition ; spring last 
she was in town for a couple of weeks ; and my dear one 
went twice to see her, though I couldn't manage quite. 
Erasmus Darwin, a most diverse kind of mortal, came to 
seek us out very soon (** had heard of Carlyle in Germany 
etc.") and continues ever since to be a quiet house-friend, 
honestly attached ; though his visits latterly have been 
rarer and rarer, health so poor, I so occupied, etc. etc. 
He had something of original and sarcastically ingenious 
in him, one of the sincerest, naturally truest, and most 
modest of men ; elder brother of Charles Darwin (the- 
famed Darwin on Species of these days), to whom I 
rather prefer him for intellect, had not his health quite- 
doomed him to silence and patient idleness ; — grandsons,, 
both, of the first famed Erasmus (*' Botanic Garden" etc.),. 
who also seems to have gone upon " species " questions, 
" omnia ex conchis''' (all from oysters) being a dictum of 

his (even a stamp he sealed with still extant), as the pres- 
28 



434 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

ent Erasmus once told me, many long years before this 
of Darwin on Species came up among us ! Wonderful 
to me, as indicating the capricious stupidity of mankind ; 
never could read a page of it, or waste the least thought 
upon it. E. Darwin it was who named the late Whewell, 
seeing him sit, all ear (not all assent) at some of my lec- 
tures, ''the Harmonious Blacksmith ;" a really descrip- 
tive title. My dear one had a great favour for this honest 
Darwin always ; many a road, to shops and the like, he 
drove her in his cab ('* Darwingium Cabbum," compara- 
ble to Georgium Sidus), in those early days when even 
the charge of omnibuses was a consideration, and his 
sparse utterances, sardonic often, were a great amusement 
to her. *'A perfect gentleman," she at once discerned 
him to be, and of sound worth and kindliness, in the most 
unaffected form. *' Take me now to Oxygen Street, a 
dyer's shop there ! " Darwin, without a wrinkle or re- 
mark, made for Oxenden Street and drew up at the re- 
quired door. Amusingly admirable to us both, when she 
came home. 

Our commonest evening sitter, for a good while, was 
Leigh Hunt, who lived close by, and delighted to sit talk- 
ing with us (free, cheery, idly melodious as bird on 
bough), or listening, with real feeling, to her old Scotch 
tunes on the piano, and winding up with a frugal morsel 
of Scotch porridge (endlessly admirable to Hunt). I think 
I spoke of this above ? Hunt was always accurately 
dressed, these evenings, and had a fine chivalrous gentle- 
manly carriage, polite, affectionate, respectful (especially 
to her), and yet so free and natural. Her brilHancy and 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 435 

faculty he at once recognised, none better, but there rose 
gradually in it, to his astonished eye, something of posi- 
tive, of practically steadfast, which scared him off a good 
deal ; the like in my own case too, still more, whi.ch he 
would call '' Scotch," " Presbyterian," who knows what ; 
and which gradually repelled him, in sorrow, not in anger, 
quite away from us, with rare exceptions, which, in his 
last years, was almost pathetic to us both. Long before 
this, he had gone to live in Kensington, and we scarcely 
saw him except by accident. His household, while in "4 
Upper Cheyne Row," within few steps of us here, almost 
at once disclosed itself to be huggermugger, unthrift, and 
sordid collapsed, once for all ; and had to be associated 
with on cautious terms ; while he himself emerged out of 
it in the chivalrous figure I describe. Dark complexion 
(a trace of the African, I believe), copious clean strong 
black hair, beautifully-shaped head, fine beaming serious 
hazel eyes ; seriousness and intellect the main expression 
of the face (to our surprise at first) ; he would lean on his 
elbow against the mantel piece (fine clean, elastic figure 
too he had, five feet ten or more), and look round him 
nearly in silence, before taking leave for the night, "as if 
I were a Lar," said he once, *' or permanent household 
god here ! " (such his polite aerial-like way). Another 
time, rising from this Lar attitude, he repeated (voice 
very fine) as if in sport of parody, yet with something of 
very sad perceptible, " While I to sulphurous and penal 
fire "... as the last thing before vanishing. Poor 
Hunt ! no more of him. She, I remember, was almost 
in tears during some last visit of his, and kind and pity- 



436 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

ino- as a daus^hter to the now weak and time-worn old 
man. 

Allan Cunningham, living in Pimlico, was well within 
walking distance, and failed not to come down now and 
then, always friendly, smooth and fond of pleasing; "a 
solid Dumfries stone-mason at any rate ! " she would de- 
fine him. He had very smooth manners, much practical 
shrewdness, some real tone of melody lodged in him, 
item a twinkle of bright mockery where he judged it safe, 
culture only superficial (of the surface, truly) ; reading, 
information, ways of thinking, all mainly ditto ditto. 
Had a good will to us evidently ; not an unwelcome face, 
when he entered, at rare intervals ; always rather rarer, as 
they proved to be ; he got at once into Nithsdale, recalled 
old rustic comicalities (seemed habitually to dwell there), 
and had not much of instruction either to give or receive. 
His resort seemed to be much among Scotch City people, 
who presented him with punchbowls etc. ; and in his own 
house there were chiefly unprofitable people to be met. 
We admired always his sense for managing himself in 
strange London ; his stalwart healthy figure and ways 
(bright hazel eyes, bald open brow, sonorous hearty tone 
of voice, a tall, perpendicular, quietly manful-looking fig- 
ure), and were sorry sincerely to lose him, as we suddenly 
did. His widow too is now gone ; some of the sons (es- 
pecially Colonel Frank, the youngest, and a daughter, 
who lives with Frank), have still a friendly though far-off 
relation to this house. 

Harriet Martineau had for some years a much more 
lively intercourse here, introduced by Darwin possibly. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 43/ 

or I forget by whom, on her return from America ; her 
book upon which was now in progress. Harriet had 
started into honhood since our first visit to London, and 
was still run much after, by a rather feeble set of persons 
chiefly. She was not unpleasant to talk with for a little, 
though through an ear-trumpet, without which she was 
totally deaf. To admire her literary genius, or even her 
solidity of common sense, was never possible for either 
of us ; but she had a sharp eye, an imperturbable self- 
possession, and in all things a swiftness of positive deci- 
sion, which joined to her evident loyalty of intention, and 
her frank, guileless, easy ways, we both liked. Her 
adorers, principally, not exclusively, '' poor whinnering 
old moneyed women in their well-hung broughams, other- 
wise idle," did her a great deal of mischief ; and indeed 
as it proved were gradually turning her fine clear head 
(so to speak), and leading to sad issues for her. Her 
talent, which in that sense was very considerable, I used 
to think, would have made her a quite shining matron of 
some big female establishment, mistress of some immense 
dress-shop, for instance (if she had a dressing-faculty, 
which perhaps she hadn't) ; but was totally inadequate to 
grapple with deep spiritual and social questions, into 
which she launched at all turns, nothing doubting. How- 
ever, she was very fond of us, me chiefly, at first, though 
gradually of both, and I was considerably the first that 
tired of her. She was much in the world, we little or 
hardly at all ; and her frank friendly countenance, eager 
for practical help had it been possible, was obliging and 
agreeable in the circumstances, and gratefully acknowl- 



438 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

edged by us. For the rest, she was full of Nigger fa- 
naticisms ; admirations for (e.g.) her brother James (a 
Socinian preacher of due quality). The *' exchange of 
ideas " with her was seldom of behoof in our poor sphere. 
But she was practically very good. I remember her 
coming down, on the sudden when it struck her, to de- 
mand dinner from us ; and dining pleasantly, with praise 
of the frugal terms. Her soirees were frequent and 
crowded (small house in Fludyer Street full to the 
door) ; and we, for sake of the notabilities or notorie- 
ties wandering about there, were willing to attend ; 
gradually learning how insignificant such notabilities 
nearly all were. Ah me, the thing which it is now touch- 
ing to reflect on, was the thrift we had to exercise, my 
little heroine and I ! My darling was always dressed to 
modest perfection (talent conspicuous in that way, I have 
always understood and heard confirmed), but the expense 
of los. 6d. for a " neat fly" was never to be thought of; 
omnibus, with clogs and the best of care, that was always 
our resource. Painful at this moment is the recollection 
I have of one time, muddy night, between Regent Street 
and our goal in Fludyer Street, when one of her clogs 
came loose ; I had to clasp it, with what impatience com- 
pared to her fine tolerance, stings me with remorse just 
now. Surely, even I might have taken a cab from Regent 
Street; is., is. 6d. ; and there could have been no 
''quarrel about fare" (which was always my horror in 
such cases) ; she, beautiful high soul, never whispered or 
dreamt of such a thing, possibly may have expressly for- 
bidden it, though I cannot recollect that it was proposed 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 439 

in this case. Shame on me ! However, I cleaned per- 
fectly my dirty fingers again (probably in some handy 
little rain-pool in the Park, with diligent wiping) ; she 
entered faultless into the illumination (I need not doubt), 
and all still went well enough. 

In a couple of years or so, our poor Harriet, nerves all 
torn by this racket, of '' fame " so-called, fell seriously ill ; 
threatening of tumour, or I know not what ; removed 
from London (never has resided there since, except for 
temporary periods) ; took shelter at Tynemouth, "to be 
near her brother-in-law, an expert surgeon in Newcastle, 
and have solitude, and the pure sea air." Solitude she 
only sometimes had ; and, in perfection, never ; for it 
soon became evident she was constantly in spectacle 
there, to herself and to the sympathetic adorers (who re- 
freshed themselves with frequent personal visits and con- 
tinual correspondings) ; and had, in sad effect, so far as 
could be managed, the whole world, along with self and 
company, for a theatre to gaze upon her. Life in the 
sickroom, with " Christus Consolator " (a paltry print then 
much canted of), etc. etc.; this, and other sad books, 
and actions full of ostentation, done there, gave painful 
evidence, followed always by painfuUer, till the atheism,, 
etc. etc., which I heard described (by the first Lady Ash- 
burton once) as " a stripping of yourself naked, not to 
the skin only, but to the bone, and walking about in that 
guise ! '* (clever of its kind). 

Once in the earliest stage of all this, we made her a 
visit, my Jane and I ; returning out of Scotland by that 
route. We were very sorry for her ; not censorious in 



440 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

any measure, though the aspects were already question- 
able, to both of us (as I surmise). We had our lodging 
in the principal street (rather noisy by night), and stayed 
about a week, not with much profit, I think, either to her 
or ourselves ; I at least with none. 

There had been, before this, some small note or two 
of correspondence ; with little hope on my part, and now 
I saw it to be hopeless. My hopefuUer and kindher little 
darhng continued it yet awhile, and I remember scrubby- 
ish (lively enough, but '' sawdustish ") Socinian didactic 
little notes from Tynemouth for a year or two hence ; but 
the vapidly didactic etc. vein continuing more and more, 
even she, I could perceive, was getting tired of it, and at 
length, our poor good Harriet, taking the sublime terror 
''that her letters might be laid hold of by improper par- 
ties in future generations," and demanding them all back 
that she herself might burn them, produced, after perhaps 
some retiring pass or two, a complete cessation. We 
never quarrelled in the least, we saw the honest ever self- 
sufficient Harriet, in the company of common friends, still 
once or twice, with pleasure rather than otherwise ; but 
never had more to do with her or say to her. A soul 
clean as river sand ; but which would evidently grow no 
flowers of our planting ! I remember our return home 
from that week at Tynemouth ; the yelling flight through 
some detestable smoky chaos, and midnight witch-dance 
of base-looking nameless dirty towns (or was this some 
other time, and Lancashire the scene ?) I remember she 
was with me, and her bright laugh (long after, perhaps 
towards Rugby now) in the face of some innocent young 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 441 

gentleman opposite, who had Ingeniously made a night- 
cap for himself of his pocket-handkerchief and looked 
really strange (an improvised •* Camus crowned with 
sedge") but was very good-humoured too. During the 
week, I also recollect reading one play (never any since 
or before) of Knight's edition of " Shakspeare," and 
making my reflections on that fatal brood of people, and 
the nature of '• fame " etc. Sweet friends, for Jesus' sake 
forbear ! 

In those first years, probably from about 1839, we 
had got acquainted with the Leeds Marshall family ; espe- 
cially with old Mr. (John) Marshall, the head and founder 
of it, and the most or really almost only interesting item 
of it. He had made immense moneys (" wealth now no 
object to him," Darwin told us in the name of everybody), 
by skilful, faithful and altogether human conduct in his 
flax and linen manufactory at Leeds ; and was now settled 
in opulently shining circumstances in London, endeavour- 
ing to enjoy the victory gained. Certain of his sons were 
carrying on the Leeds " business " in high, quasi ** patri- 
otic " and '^morally exemplary," though still prudent 
and successful style ; the eldest was in Parliament, " a 
landed gentleman " etc. etc. ; wife and daughters were 
the old man's London household, with sons often incident- 
ally present there. None of them was entertaining to 
speak with, though all were honest wholesome people. 
The old man himself, a pale, sorrow-stricken, modest, 
yet dignified-looking person, full of respect for intellect, 
wisdom and worth (as he understood the terms) ; low 
voiced, almost timidly inarticulate (you would have 



442 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

said) ; yet with a definite and mildly precise imperative- 
ness to his subalterns, as I have noticed once or twice, 
was an amicable, humane, and thoroughly respectable 
phenomenon to me. The house (Grosvenor Street, west- 
ern division), was resplendent, not gaudy, or offensive 
with wealth and its fruits and furnishings ; the dinners 
large, and splendidly served ; guests of distinction (espe- 
cially on the Whig or Radical side), were to be met with 
there, and a good sprinkling of promising younger people 
of the same, or a superior type. Soirees extensive, and 
sumptuously illuminated in all senses, but generally not 
entertaining. My astonishment at the '' Reform" M.P.'s 
whom I met there, and the notions they seemed "re- 
forming " (and radicalling, and quarrelling with their su- 
riors) upon ! We went pretty often (I think I myself far 
the oftener, as in such cases, my loyal little darling taking 
no manner of offence not to participate in my lionings, 
but behaving like the royal soul she was, I, dullard egoist, 
taking no special recognition of such nobleness, till the 
bar was quite passed, or even not fully then !) Alas, I 
see it now (perhaps better than I ever did !), but we sel- 
dom had much real profit, or even real enjoyment for the 
hour. We never made out together that often-urged 
''visit to Halsteads " (grand mansion and establishment, 
near Greystoke, head of Ullswater in Cumberland). I 
myself, partly by accident, and under convoy of James 
Spedding, was there once, long after, for one night ; and 
felt very dull and wretched, though the old man and his 
good old wife etc. were so good. Old Mr. Marshall was 
a man worth having known ; evidently a great deal of hu- 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 443 

man worth and wisdom lying funded in him. And the 
world's resources even when he had victory over it to the 
full, were so exiguous, and perhaps to himself almost con- 
temptible ! I remember well always, he gave me the first 
horse I ever had in London, and with what noble simpli- 
city of unaffected politeness he did it. ** Son William " 
(the gentleman son, out near Watford) " will be glad to 
take it off your hands through winter ; and in summer it 
will help your health, you know 1 " And in this way it 
continued two summers (most part of two), till in the 
second winter William brought it down ; and it had to be 
sold for a trifle, 17/. if I recollect, which William would 
not give to the Anti-Corn-Law Fund (then struggling in 
the shallows) as I urged, but insisted on handing over to 
me. And so it ended. I was at Headingely (by Leeds) 
with James Marshall, just wedded to Spring-Rice's daugh- 
ter, a languishing patroness of mine ; stayed till third 
day ; and never happened to return. And this was about 
the sum of my share in the Marshall adventure. It is 
well known the Marshall daughters were all married off 
(each of them had 50,000/.) and what intricate intermar- 
rying with the Spring-Rices there was, "Dowager Lady 
Monteagle " that now is. being quasi-mother-in-law of 
James Marshall, her own brother, wife etc. etc. ! *' Fam- 
ily so used up !" as old Rogers used to snuffle and say. My 
Jeannie quarrelled with nothing .in Marshalldom ; quite 
the contrary ; formed a kind of friendship (conquest I 
believe it was, on her side generously converted into some- 
thing of friendship) with Cordelia Marshall, a prim affec- 
tionate, but rather puling weak and sentimental elderly 



444 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

young lady, who became, shortly after, wife, first wife of 
the late big Whewell, and aided his position and advance- 
ment towards Mastership of Trinity, etc. I recollect 
seeing them both here, and Cordelia's adoration of her 
*' Harmonious Blacksmith," with friendly enough assent, 
and some amusement, from us two ; and I don't think I 
ever saw Cordelia again. She soon ceased to write 
hither ; we transiently heard, after certain years, that she 
vi^as dead, and Whewell had married again, 

I am weary, writing down all this ; so little has my 
lost one to do \vith it, which alone could be its interest 
for me ! I believe I should stop short. The London 
years are not definite, or fertile in disengaged remem- 
brances, like the Scotch ones: dusty dim, unbeautiful 
they still seem to me in comparison ; and my poor Jean- 
nie's '* problem " (which I believe was sorer, perhaps far 
sorer, than ever of old, but in which she again proved not 
to be vanquishable, and at length to be triumphant !) is 
so mixed with confusing intricacies to me that I cannot 
sort it out into clear articulation at all, or give the features 
of it, as before. The general type of it is shiningly clear 
to me. A noble fight at my side ; a valiant strangling of 
serpents day after day done gaily by her (for most part), as 
I had to do it angrily and gloomily ; thus we went on to- 
gether. Ay de mi ! Ay de mi ! 

[June 28. Note from Dods yesterday that the tablet' 
was not come, nor indeed had been expected ; note to- 
day that it did come yesterday ; at this hour probably the 
mason is hewing out a bed for it ; in the silence of the 

^ For the church at Haddington, where Mrs. Carlyle was buried. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 445 

Abbey Kirk yonder, as completion of her father's tomb. 
The eternities looking down on him, and on us poor Sons 
of Time ! Peace, peace !] 

By much the tenderest and beautifullest reminiscence 
to me out of those years is that of the Lecture times. The 
vilest welter of odious confusions, horrors and repugnan- 
cies ; to which, meanwhile, there was compulsion abso- 
lute ; and to which she was the one irradiation ; noble 
loving soul, not to be quenched in any chaos that might 
come. Oh, her love to me ; her cheering, unaffected, 
useful practicality of help : was not I rich, after all ? She 
had a steady hope in me, too, while I myself had habitu- 
ally none (except of the desperate kind) ; nay a steady 
contentment with me, and with our lot together, let hope 
be as it might. ** Never mind him, my dear," whispered 
Miss Wilson to her, one day, as I stood wriggling in my 
agony of incipiency, ** people like it ; the more of that, 
the better does the Lecture prove ! " Which was a truth ; 
though the poor sympathiser might, at the moment, feel 
it harsh. This }kliss Wilson and her brother still live 
(2 Eccleston Street) ; opulent, fine, Church of England 
people (scrupulously orthodox to the secularities not less 
than the spiritualities of that creed), and Miss W^ilson very 
clever too (i.e. full of strong just insight in her way) ; who 
had from the first taken to us. and had us much about 
them (^Spedding, Maurice, etc. attending) then and for 
some years afterwards ; very desirous to help us, if that 
could have much done it (for indeed, to me, it was always 
mainly an indigestion purchased by a loyal kind of weari- 
ness). I have seen Sir James Stephen there, but did not 



44^ JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

then understand him, or that he could be a " clever man," 
as reported by Henry Taylor and other good judges. 
*' He shuts his eyes on you," said the elder Spring-Rice 
(Lord Monteagle), '' and talks as if he were dictating a 
Colonial Despatch " (most true ; " teaching you how not 
to do it," as Dickens defined afterwards) ; one of the 
pattest things I ever heard from Spring-Rice, who had 
rather a turn for such. Stephen ultimately, when on half- 
pay and a Cambridge Professor, used to come down 
hither pretty often on an evening, and we heard a great 
deal of talk from him, recognisably serious and able, 
though always in that Colonial-Office style, more or less. 
Colonial-Office being an Impotency (as Stephen inarticu- 
lately, though he never said or whispered it, well knew), 
what could an earnest and honest kind of man do, but try 
and teach you how not to do it > Stephen seemed to me 
a master in that art. 

The lecture time fell in the earlier part of the Sterhng 
period, which latter must have lasted in all, counting till 
John's death, about ten years (autumn 1845 when John 
died). To my Jeannie, I think, this was clearly the sun- 
niest and wholesomest element in her then outer Hfe. All 
the household loved her, and she had virtually, by her 
sense, by her felt loyalty, expressed oftenest in a gay 
mildly quizzing manner, a real influence, a kind of Hght 
command one might almost call it, willingly yielded her 
among them. Details of this are in print (as I said 
above). In the same years, Mrs. BuUer (Charles's 
mother) was a very cheerful item to her. Mrs. B. (a 
whilom Indian beauty, wit and finest fine lady), who hadj 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 447 

at all times a very recognising eye for talent, and real 
reverence for it, very soon made out something of my 
little woman, and took more and more to her, all the time 
she lived after. Mrs. B.'s circle was gay and populous at 
this time (Radical chiefly ; Radical lions of every com- 
plexion), and we had as much of it as we would consent 
to. I remember being at Leatherhcad too, and, after 
that a pleasant rustic week at Troston Parsonage (in Suf- 
folk, where Mrs. B.'s youngest son ** served," and serves), 
which Mrs. B. contrived very well to make the best of, 
sending me to ride for three days in Oliver Cromwell's 
country, that she might have the wife more to herself. 
My Jane must have been there altogether, I dare say, 
near a month (had gone before me, returned after me), 
and I regretted never to have seen the place again. This 
must have been in September or October 1842 ; Mrs. 
•Welsh's death in early spring past. I remember well my 
feelings in Ely Cathedral, in the close of sunset or dusk ; 
the place was open, free to me without witnesses ; people 
seemed to be tuning the organ, which went in solemn 
gusts far aloft. The thought of Oliver, and his " Leave 
off your fooling, sir, and come down ! " was almost as if 
audible to me. Sleepless night, owing to cathedral bells, 
and strange ride next day to St. Ives, to Hinchinbrook, 
etc., and thence to Cambridge, with thundercloud and 
lightning dogging me to rear and bursting into torrents 
few minutes after I got into the Hoop Inn. 

My poor darling had, for constant accompaniment to 
all her bits of satisfactions, an altogether weak state of 
health, continually breaking down, into violent fits of 



448 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

headache in her best times, and in winter-season into 
cough etc. in hngering forms of a quite sad and exhaust- 
ing sort. Wonderful to me how she, so sensitive a crea- 
ture, maintained her hoping cheerful humour to such a 
degree, amidst all that; and, except the pain of inevitable 
sympathy, and vague fluttering fears, gave me no pain. 
Careful always to screen me from pain, as I by no means 
always reciprocally was ; alas, no, miserable egoist in 
comparison. At this time I must have been in the thick 
of " Cromwell ;" four years of abstruse toil, obscure 
speculations, futile wrestling, and misery, I used to count 
it had cost me, before I took to editing the ** Letters and 
Speeches " (" to have them out of my way "), which rap- 
idly drained off the sour swamp water bodily, and left me, 
beyond all first expectation, quite free of the matter. 
Often I have thought how miserable my books must have 
been to her, and how, though they were none of her 
choosing, and had come upon her like ill weather or ill 
health, she at no instant, never once I do believe, made 
the least complaint of me or my behaviour (often bad, 
or at least thoughtless and weak) under them ! Always 
some quizzing httle lesion, the purport and effect of 
which was to encourage me ; never once anything worse. 
Oh, it was noble, and I see it so well now, when it is gone 
from me, and no return possible. 

'* Cromwell" was by much the worst book-time, till 
this of '' Friedrich," which indeed was infinitely worse ; 
in the dregs of our strength too ; — and lasted for about 
thirteen years. She was generally in quite weak health, 
too, and was often, for long weeks or months, miserably ill. 



i 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 449 

It was strange how she contrived to sift out of such a 
troublous forlorn day as hers, in each case, was, all avail- 
able little items, as she was sure to do, and used to have 
them ready for me in the evening when my work was 
done, in the prettiest little narrative anybody could have 
given of such things. Never again shall I have such me- 
lodious, humanly beautiful half-hours ; they were the rain- 
bow of my poor dripping day, and reminded me that 
there otherwise was a sun. At this time, and all along, 
she " did all the society ; " was all brightness to the one 
or two (oftenest rather dull and prosaic fellows, for the 
better sort respected my seclusion, especially during that 
last " Friedrich " time) whom I needed to see on my af- 
fairs in hand, or who with more of brass than others, 
managed to intrude upon me. For these she did, in their 
several kinds, her very best. Her own people whom I 
might be apt to feel wearisome (dislike any of them I 
never did, or his or her discharge from service would have 
swiftly followed), she kept beautifully out of my way, sav- 
ing my " politeness " withal ; a very perfect skill she had 
in all this ; and took my dark toiling periods, however 
long sullen and severe they might be, with a loyalty and 
heart acquiescence that never failed, the heroic little soul ! 

" Latter-Day Pamphlet" time, and especially the time 
that preceded it (1848 etc.) must have been very sore and 
heavy. My heart was long overloaded with the mean- 
ings at length uttered there, and no way of getting them 
set forth would answer. I forget what ways I tried, or 
thought of. ** Times " newspaper was one (alert, airy, 

rather vacant editorial gentleman I remember going to 
29 



450 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

once, in Printing House Square) ; but this, of course, 
proved hypothetical merely, as all others did, till we, as 
last shift, gave the rough MSS. to Chapman (in Forster's 
company one winter Sunday). About half of those ulti- 
mately printed might be in Chapman's hands, but there 
was much manipulation as well as addition needed. Fors- 
ter soon fell away, I could perceive, into terror and sur- 
prise, as indeed everybody did. '' A lost man ! " thought 
everybody. Not she at any moment ; much amused by 
the outside pother, she, and glad to see me getting deliv- 
ered of my black electricities and consuming fires in that 
way. Strange letters came to us, during those nine 
months of pamphleteering, strange visitors (of moon- 
struck unprofitable type for most part), who had, for one 
reason or another, been each of them wearing himself 
half-mad on some one of the public scandals I was recog- 
nizing and denouncing. I still remember some of their 
faces and the look their paper bundles had. She got a 
considerable entertainment out of all that, went along 
with me in everything (probably counselling a little here 
and there, a censorship well worth my regarding, and 
generally adoptable, here as everywhere), and minded no 
whit any results that might follow this evident speaking 
of the truth. Somebody, writing from India I think, and 
clearly meaning kindness, "did hope" (some time after- 
awards) '* the tide would turn, and this lamentable hostility 
of the press die away into friendship again ; " at which I 
remember our innocent laughter, ignorant till then what 
"The Press's" feelings were, and leaving "The Press" 
very welcome to them then. Neuberg helped me zeal- 



I 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 45 1 

ously, as volunteer amanuensis etc., through all this busi- 
ness, but I know not that even he approved it all, or any 
of it to the bottom. In the whole world I had one com- 
plete approver ; in that, as in other cases, one, and it was 
worth all. 

On the back of "Latter-Day Pamphlets" followed 
** Life of Sterling ; " a very quiet thing, but considerably 
disapproved of too, as I learned, and utterly revolting to 
the religious people in particular (to my surprise rather 
than otherwise). "Doesn't believe in us, then, either?" 
Not he, for certain ; can't, if you will know ! Others urged 
disdainfully, " What has Sterling done that he should have 
a Life ! " " Induced Carlyle somehow to write him one ! " 
answered she once (to the Ferguses, I think) in an arch 
• airy way which I can well fancy, and which shut up that 
question there. The book was afterwards greatly praised, 
again on rather weak terms I doubt. What now will 
please me best in it, and alone will, was then an accident- 
al quality, the authentic light, under the due conditions, 
that is thrown by it on her. Oh, my dear one, sad is my 
soul for the loss of thee, and will to the end be, as I com- 
pute ! Lonelier creature there is not henceforth in this 
world ; neither person, work, nor thing going on in it that 
is of any value, in comparison, or even at all. Death I 
feel almost daily in express fact, death is the one haven ; 
and have occasionally a kind of kingship, sorrowful, but 
sublime, almost godlike, in the feeling that that is nigh. 
Sometimes the image of her, gone in her car of victory 
(in that beautiful death), and as if nodding to me with a 
smile, *' I am gone, loved one ; work a little longer, if 



452 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

thou Still carest ; if not, follow. There is no baseness, 
and no misery here. Courage, courage to the last ! " that, 
sometimes, as in this moment, is inexpressibly beautiful 
to me, and comes nearer to bringing tears than it once 
did. 

In 1852 had come the new modelling of our house, 
attended with infinite dusty confusion (head-carpenter^ 
stupid though honest, fell ill, etc. etc.) ; confusion faUing 
upon her more than me, and at length upon her alto- 
gether. She was the architect, guiding and directing and 
contriving genius, in all that enterprise, seemingly so 
foreign to her. But, indeed, she was ardent in it, and she 
had a talent that way which was altogether unique in my 
experience. An *' eye " first of all ; equal in correctness 
to a joiner's square, this, up almost from her childhood, # 
as I understood. Then a sense of order, sense of beauty, 
of wise and thrifty convenience ; sense of wisdom alto- 
gether in fact, for that was it ; a human intellect shining 
luminous in every direction, the highest and the lowest 
(as I remarked above). In childhood she used to be sent 
to seek when things fell lost ; " the best seeker of us all," 
her father would say, or look (as she thought) ; for me 
also she sought everything, with such success as I never 
saw elsewhere. It was she who widened our drawing- 
room (as if by a stroke of genius) and made it zealously 
(at the partial expense of three feet from her own bed- 
room) into what it is, one of the prettiest little drawing- 
rooms I ever saw, and made the whole house into what it 
now is. How frugal, too, and how modest about it ! 
House was hardly finished, when there arose that of the 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 453 

" demon fowls," as she appropriately named them ; ma- 
caws, Cochin-chinas, endless concert of crowing, cack- 
ling, shrieking roosters (from a bad or misled neighbour, 
next door) which cut us off from sleep or peace, at times 
altogether, and were like to drive me mad, and her 
through me, through sympathy with me. From which 
also she was my deliverer, had delivered and contrived to 
deliver me from hundreds of such things (oh, my beauti- 
ful little Alcides, in the new days of anarchy and the 
mud-gods, threatening to crush down a poor man, and 
kill him with his work still on hand !) I remember well 
her setting off, one winter morning, from the Grange on 
this enterprise, probably having thought of it most of the 
night (sleep denied). She said to me next morning the 
first thing : ** Dear, we must extinguish those demon 
fowls, or they will extinguish us ! Rent the house (No. 
6, proprietor mad etc. etc.) ourselves ! it is but some 40/. 
a year ; pack away those vile people, and let it stand 
empty. ** I will go this very day upon it, if you assent ; " 
and she w^ent accordingly, and slew altogether this Lerna 
hydra, at far less expense than taking the house, nay al- 
most at no expense at all, except by her fine intellect, 
tact, just discernment, swiftness of decision, and general 
nobleness of mind (in short). Oh, my bonny little wo- 
man, mine only in memory now ! 

I left the Grange two days after her, on this occasion, 
hastening through London, gloomy of mind, to see my 
dear old mother yet once (if I might) before she died. 
She had, for many months before, been evidently and 
painfully sinking away, under no disease, but the ever- 



454 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

increasing infirmities of eighty-three years of time. She 
had expressed no desire to see me, but her love from my 
birth upwards, under all scenes and circumstances, I knew 
to be emphatically a mother's. I walked from the Kirtle- 
bridge Station that dim winter morning ; my one thought 
** Shall I see her yet alive ? " She was still there ; weary, 
very weary, and wishing to be at rest. I think she only 
at times knew me ; so bewildering were her continual dis- 
tresses ; once she entirely forgot me ; then, in a minute or 
two, asked my pardon. Ah me ! ah me ! It was my 
mother and not my mother ; the last pale rim or sickle of 
the moon, which had once been full, now sinking in the 
dark seas. This lasted only three days. Saturday night 
she had her full faculties, but was in nearly unendurable 
misery, not breath sufficient etc., etc. John tried various 
reliefs, had at last to give a few drops of laudanum, which 
eased the misery, and in an hour or two brought sleep. 
All next day she lay asleep, breathing equally but heavily, 
her face grand and solemn, almost severe, like a marble 
statue ; about four P.M. the breathing suddenly halted, 
recommenced for half an instant, then fluttered, ceased. 
*' All the days of my appointed time," she had often said, 
** will I wait till my change come." The most beautifully 
religious soul I ever knew. Proud enough she was too, 
though piously humble, and full of native intellect, hu- 
mour, etc., though all undeveloped. On the religious 
side, looking into the very heart of the matter, I always 
reckon her rather superior to my Jane, who in other 
shapes and with far different exemplars and conditions, 
had a great deal of noble religion too. Her death filled 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 455 

me with a kind of dim amazement and crush of confused 
sorrows, which were very painful, but not so sharply pa- 
thetic as I might have expected. It was the earliest terror 
of my childhood *' that I might lose my mother; " and it 
had gone with me all my days. But, and that is probably 
the whole account of it, I was then sunk in the miseries 
of " Friedrich " etc. etc., in many miseries ; and was then 
fifty-eight years of age. It is strange to me, in these very 
days, how peaceable, though still sacred and tender, the 
memory of my mother now lies in me. (This very morn- 
ing, I got into dreaming confused nightmare stuff about 
some funeral and her ; not hers, nor obviously my Jane's, 
seemingly my father's rather, and she sending me on it, — 
the saddest bewildered stuff. What a dismal debasing and 
confusing element is that of a sick body on the human 
soul or thinking part !) 

It was in 1852 (September-October, for about a month) 
that I had first seen Germany, gone on my first errand as 
to "Friedrich:" there was a second, five years after- 
wards ; this time it was to enquire (of Preuss and Co.) ; 
to look about me, search for books, portraits, etc. etc. I 
went from Scotsbrig (my dear old mother painfully weak, 
though I had no thought it would be the last time I should 
see her afoot) ; from Scotsbrig for Leith by Rotterdam, 
Koln, Bonn (Neuberg's) ; — and on the whole never had 
nearly so (outwardly) unpleasant a journey in my life ; till 
the second and last I made thither. But the Chelsea es- 
tablishment was under carpenters, painters ; till those dis- 
appeared, no work possible, scarcely any living possible 
(though my brave woman did make it possible without 



45^ JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

complaint). " Stay so many weeks, all painting at least 
shall then be off ! " I returned, near broken-down utterly, 
at the set time ; and alas, was met by a foul dabblement 
of paint oozing downstairs ; the painters had proved 
treacherous to her ; time could not be kept ! It was the 
one instance of such a thing here : and, except the first 
sick surprise, I now recollect no more of it. 

*' Mamma, wine makes cosy ! " said the bright little 
one, perhaps between two and three years old, her 
mother, after some walk with sprinkling of wet or the 
like, having given her a dram-glass of wine on their get- 
ting home: ''Mamma, wine makes cosy!" said the 
small silver voice, gaily sipping, getting its new bits of 
insight into natural philosophy! What ''pictures" has 
my beautiful one left me ; what joys can surround every 
well-ordered human heart. I said long since, I never saw 
so beautiful a childhood. Her little bit of a first chair, 
its wee wee arms etc., visible to me in the closet at this 
moment, is still here, and always was. I have looked at 
it hundreds of times ; from of old, with many thoughts. 
No daughter or son of hers was to sit there ; so it had 
been appointed us, my darUng. I have no book a thou- 
sandth-part so beautiful as thou ; but these were our only 
" children," — and, in a true sense, these were verily ours ; 
and will perhaps live some time in the world, after we are 
both gone ; — and be of no damage to the poor brute 
chaos of a world, let us hope ! The Will of the Supreme 
shall be accomplished. Amen. But to proceed. 

Shortly after my return from Germany (next summer 
I think, while the Cochin-chinas were at work, and we 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 457 

could not quit the house, having spent so much on it, and 
got a long lease), there began a new still worse hurly- 
burly of the building kind, that of the new top-story, — 
whole area of the house to be thrown into one sublime 
garret-room, lighted from above, thirty feet by thirty say, 
and at least eleven feet high, double-doored, double-win-- 
dowed, impervious to sound, to — in short, to everything 
but self and work ! I had my grave doubts about all 
this ; but John Chorley, in his friendly zeal, warmly 
urged it on, pushed, superintended ; — and was a good 
deal disgusted with my dismal experience of the result. 
Something really good might have come of it in a scene 
where good and faithful work was to be had on the part 
of all, from architect downwards ; but here, from all 
(except one good young man of the carpenter trade, whom 
I at length noticed thankfully in small matters), the 
" work," of planning to begin with, and then of executing, 
in all its details, \vas mere work of Belial, i.e. of the Father 
of lies; such " work" as I had not conceived the; possi- 
bility of among the sons of Adam till then. By degrees, 
I perceived it to be the ordinary English " work " of this 
epoch ; and, \vith manifold reflections, deep as Tophet, 
on the outlooks this offered for us all, endeavoured to be 
silent as to my own little failure. My new illustrious 
" study " was definable as the least inhabitable, and most 
entirely detestable and despicable bit of human workman- 
ship in that kind, sad and odious to me very. But, by 
many and long-continued efforts, with endless bothera- 
tions which lasted for two or three years after (one winter 
starved by " Arnott's improved grate," I recollect), I did 



458 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

get it patched together into something of supportabihty ; 
and continued, though under protest, to inhabit it during 
all working hours, as I had indeed from the first done. 
The whole of the now printed '' Friedrich " was written 
there (or in summer in the back court and garden, when 
driven down by baking heat). Much rawer matter, I 
think, was tentatively on paper, before this sublime new 
*' study." ''Friedrich" once done, I quitted the place 
for ever, and it is now a bedroom for the servants. The 
" architect " for this beautiful bit of masonry and carpen- 
try was one " Parsons," really a clever creature, I could 
see, but swimming as for dear life in a mere " mother of 
dead dogs " (ultimately did become bankrupt). His men 
of all types, Irish hodmen and upwards, for real mendacity 
of hand, for drunkenness, greediness, mutinous nomadism, 
and anarchic malfeasance throughout, excelled all experi- 
ence or conception. Shut the Hd on their " unexampled 
prosperity " and them, for evermore. 

The sufferings of my poor little woman, throughout 
all this, must have been great, though she whispered 
nothing of them, — the rather, as this was my enterprise 
(both the " Friedrich " and it) ; — indeed it was by her ad- 
dress and invention that I got my sooterkin of a *' study" 
improved out of its worst blotches ; it was she, for ex- 
ample, that went silently to Bramah's smith people, and 
got me a fireplace, of merely human sort, which actually 
warmed the room and sent Arnott's miracle about its 
business. But undoubtedly that " Friedrich " affair, with 
its many bad adjuncts, was much the worst we ever had, 
and sorely tried us both. It lasted thirteen years or more. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 459 

To me a desperate dead-lift pull all that time ; my whole 
strength 'devoted to it ; alone, withdrawn from all the 
world (except some bores who would take no hint, almost 
nobody came to see me, nor did I wish almost anybody 
then left living for me), all the world withdrawing from 
me ; I desperate of ever getting through (not to speak of 
" succeeding,") left solitary " with the nightmares" (as I 
sometimes expressed it), ''hugging unclean creatures" 
(Prussian Blockheadism) ** to my bosom, trying to caress 
and flatter their secret out of them ! " Why do I speak 
of all this ? It is now become Koirpo^ to me, insignificant as 
the dung of a thousand centuries ago. I did get through, 
thank God ; let it now wander into the belly of oblivion 
for ever. But what I do still, and shall more and more, 
remember with loving admiration is her behavior in it'. 
She was habitually in the feeblest health ; often, for long 
whiles, grievously ill. Yet by an alchemy all her own, 
she had extracted grains as of gold out of every day, and 
seldom or never failed to have something bright and 
pleasant to tell me, when I reached home after my even- 
ing ride, the most fordone of men. In all, I rode, during 
that book, some 30,000 miles, much of it (all the winter 
part of it) under cloud of night, sun just setting when I 
mounted. All the rest of the day, I sat silent aloft, in- 
sisting upon work, and such work, mvitissimd Minerva 
for that matter. Home between five and six, with mud 
mackintoshes off, and, the nightmares locked up for a 
while, I tried for an hour's sleep before my (solitary, die- 
tetic, altogether simple) bit of dinner ; but first always 
came up for half an hour to the drawing-room and her ; 



46o JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

where a bright kindly fire was sure to be burning (candles 
hardly lit, all in trustful chiaroscuro), and a spoonful of 
brandy in water, with a pipe of tobacco (which I had 
learned to take sitting on the rug, with my back to the 
jamb, and door never so little open, so that all the smoke, 
if I was careful, went up the chimney), this was the one 
bright portion of my black day. Oh, those evening half- 
hours, how beautiful and blessed they were, not awaiting 
me now on my home-coming, for the last ten weeks ! She 
was oftenest reclining on the sofa ; wearied enough, she 
too, with her day's doings and endurings. But her his- 
tory, even of what was bad, had such grace and truth, 
and spontaneous tinkling melody of a naturally cheerful 
and loving heart, that I never anywhere enjoyed the like. 
Her courage, patience, silent heroism, meanwhile, must 
often have been immense. Within the last two years or 
so she has told me about my talk to her of the Battle of 
Molhvitz on these occasions, while that was on the anvil. 
She was lying on the sofa, weak, but I knew little how 
weak, and patient, kind, quiet and good as ever. After 
tugging and wriggling through what inextricable labyrinth 
and slough of despond I still remember, it appears I had 
at last conquered MoUwitz, saw it all clear ahead and 
round me, and took to telling her about it, in my poor 
bit of joy, night after night. I recollect she answered 
little, though kindly always. Privately, she at that time 
felt convinced she was dying : — dark winter, and such the 
weight of misery and utter decay of strength, and, night 
after night, my theme to her, Mollwitz ! This she owned 
to me, within the last year or two, which how could I lis- 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 46 1 

ten to without shame and abasement ? Never in my pre- 
tended superior kind of life, have I done, for love of any 
creature, so supreme a kind of thing. It touches me at 
this moment with penitence and humiliation, yet with a 
kind of soft religious blessedness too. She read the first 
two volumes of " Friedrich," much of it in printer's sheets 
(while on visit to the aged Misses Donaldson at Hadding- 
ton) ; her blame was unerringly straight upon the blot, 
her applause (should not I collect her fine notekins and 
reposit them here ?) was beautiful and as sunlight to me, 
for I knew it was sincere withal, however exaggerated by 
her great love of me. The other volumes (hardly even 
the third, I think) she never read — I knew too well why ; 
and submitted without murmur, save once or twice per- 
haps a little quiz on the subject, which did not afflict her, 
either. Too weak, too weak by far, for a dismal enter- 
prise of that kind, as I knew too well ! But those Hadding- 
ton visits were very beautiful to her (and to me through 
her letters and her), and by that time we were over the 
hill and "the worst of our days were passed" (as poor 
Irving used to give for toast, long ago), worst of them 
past, though we did not yet quite know it. 

[July 3. J Voll. I and 2 of "Friedrich" were pub- 
h'shed, I find, in 1858. Probably about two years before 
that was the nadir of my wife's sufferings, — internal suffer- 
ings and dispiritments ; for outward fortune etc. had now, 
for about ten years, been on a quite tolerable footing, and 
indeed evidently fast on the improving hand : nor had 
this, at any worse time, ever disheartened her, or dark- 
ened her feelings. But in 1856, owing to many circum- 



462 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

Stances, my engrossment otherwise (sunk in " Friedrich,'* 
in etc. etc. ; far less exclusively, very far less, than she 
supposed, poor soul !) ; — and owing chiefly, one may 
fancy, to the deeper downbreak of her own poor health, 
which from this time, as I now see better, continued its 
advance upon the citadel, or nervous system, and intrinsi- 
cally grew worse and worse: — in 1856, too evidently, to 
whatever owing, my poor little darling was extremely 
miserable ! Of that year there is a bit of private diary, 
by chance left unburnt ; found by me since her death, 
and not to be destroyed, however tragical and sternly 
sad are parts of it. She had written, I sometimes knew 
(though she would never show to me or to mortal any 
word of them), at different times, various bits of diary ; 
and was even, at one time, upon a kind of autobiography 

(had not C , the poor C now just gone, stept into 

it with swine's foot, most intrusively, though without ill 
intention, — finding it unlocked one day ; — and produced 
thereby an instantaneous burning of it ; and of all like it 
which existed at that time). Certain enough, she wrote 
various bits of diary and private record, unknown to me : 
but never anything so sore, downhearted, harshly dis- 
■tressed and sad as certain pages (right sure am I !) which 
alone remain as specimen ! The rest are all burnt ; no 
trace of them, seek where I may. 

A very sad record ! We went to Scotland soon after ; 
she to Auchtertool (cousin Walter's), I to the Gill (sister 
Mary's). 

In July 1856, soon after, may have been about middle 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 463 

of month, we went to Edinburgh ; a blazing day, full of 
dust and tumult, which I still very well remember ! Lady 
Ashburton had got for herself a grand ** Queen's saloon " 
or ne-plus-ultra of railway carriages (made for the Queen 
some time before) costing no end of money. Lady sat, or 
lay, in the saloon. A common six-seat carriage, imme- 
diately contiguous, was accessible from it. In this the 
lady had insisted we should ride, with her doctor and her 
maid ; a mere partition, with a door, dividing us from 
her. The lady was very good, cheerful though much un- 
well ; bore all her difficulties and disappointments with 
an admirable equanimity and magnanimity : but it was 
physically almost the uncomfortablest journey I ever 
made. At Peterborough, the ne-pliLS-itltra was found to 
have its axletree on fire ; at every station afterwards 
buckets were copiously dashed and poured (the magnani- 
mous lady saying never a syllable to it) ; and at New- 
castle-on-Tyne, they flung the humbug ne-phis away 
altogether, and our whole party into common carriages. 
Apart from the burning axle, we had suffered much from 
dust and even from foul air, so that at last I got the door 
opened, and sat with my head stretched out backward, 
into the wind. This had alarmed my poor wife, lest I 
should tumble out altogether ; and she angrily forbade it, 
dear loving woman, and I complied, not at first knowing 
why she was angry. This and Lady A. 's opening her door 
to tell us, ** Here is Hinchinbrook ! " (a long time before, 
and with something of pathos traceable in her cheery 
voice) are nearly all that I now remember of the base and 
dirty hurlyburly. Lord A. had preceded by some days, 



4^4 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

and was waiting for our train at Edinburgh 9.30 P.M.; 
hurlyburly greater and dirtier than ever. They went 
for Barry's Hotel at once, servants and all ; no time to in- 
form us (officially), that we too were their guests. But 
that, too, passed well. We ordered apartments, refresh- 
ments of our own there (first of all baths ; inside of my 
shirt-collar was as black as ink !), and before the refresh- 
ments were ready, we had a gay and cordial invitation 
etc. etc. ; found the " old bear" (Ellis) in their rooms, I 
remember, and Lord A. and he with a great deal to say 
about Edinburgh and its people and phenomena. Next 
morning the Ashburtons'went for Kinloch-Luichart (fine 
hunting seat in Ross-shire) ; and my dear little woman to 
her cousin's at Auchtertool, where I remember she was 
much soothed by their kindness, and improved considera- 
bly in health for the time. The day after seeing her set- 
tled there, I made for Annandale, and my sister Mary's at 
the Gill. (Maggie Welsh, now here with me, has helped 
in adjusting into clearness the recollection of all this.) I 
remember working on final corrections of books ii. and 
iii. of " Friedrich," and reading in " Plato " (translation, 
and not my first trial of him) while there. My darling's 
letters I remember, too (am on search for them just now), 
also visits from sister Jean and to Dumfries and her, silent 
nocturnal rides from that town etc., and generally much 
riding on the (Priestside) Solway Sands, and plenty of 
sombre occupation to my thoughts. 

Late on in autumn, I met my Jeannie at Kirkcaldy 
again ; uncomfortably lodged, both of us, and did not 
loiter (though the people very kind) ; I was bound for 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 465 

Ross-shire and the Ashburtons (miserable journey thither, 
sombre, miserable stay there, wet weather, sickly, solitary 
mostly, etc. etc.) ; my wife had gone to her aunts' in 
Edinburgh for a night or two ; to the Haddington Miss 
Donaldsons ; and in both places, the latter especially, had 
much to please her, and came away with the resolution to 
go again. 

Next year, 1857, she went accordingly, stayed with the 
Donaldsons (eldest of these old ladies, now well above 
eighty, and gone stone blind, was her '' godmother," had 
been at Craigenputtoch to see us, the dearest of old 
friends my wife now had). She was at Auchtertool too, 
at Edinburgh with her aunts, once and again ; but the 
chief element was *' Sunny Bank, Haddington," which 
she began with and ended with ; a stay of some length 
each time. Happy to her, and heart-interesting to a high 
degree, though sorrowfully involved in almost constant 
bodily pain. It was a tour for health, urged on her by me 
for that end ; and the poor little darling seemed inwardly 
to grudge all along the expense on herself (generous soul !) 
as if she were not worth money spent, though money was 
in no scarcity with us now ! I was printing " Friedrich," 
voll. i. and ii., here; totally solitar}^ and recollect her 
letters of that tour as altogether genial and delightful, sad 
and miserable as the view is which they now give me of 
her endless bodily distresses and even torments, now when 
I read them again after nine years, and what has befallen 
me eleven weeks ago ! 

Sunday, July 8. Began writing again at the second 
line of this page ; the intermediate time has been spent in 
30 



466 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

a strenuous search for, and collection of all her letters now 
discoverable (by Maggie Welsh and me), which is now 
completed, or nearly so, 1843-2 the earhest found (though 
surely there ought to be others, of 1837 etc. ?), and some of 
almost every year onward to the last. They are exceedingly 
difficult to arrange, not having in general any date, so that 
place often enough, and day and even year throughout, are 
mainly to be got by the Post Office stamp, supported by 
inference and enquiry such as is still possible, at least to me. 
The whole of yesterday I spent in reading and arran- 
ging the letters of 1857 ; such a day's reading as I perhaps 
never had in my life before. What a piercing radiancy of 
meaning to me in those dear records, hastily thrown off, 
full of misery, yet of bright eternal love ; all as if on wings 
of lightning, tingling through one's very heart of hearts ! 
Oh, I was blind not to see how brittle was that thread of 
noble celestial (almost more than terrestrial) life ; how 
much it was all in all to me, and how impossible it should 
long be left with me. Her sufferings seem little short of 
those in a hospital fever- ward, as she painfully drags her- 
self about ; and yet constantly there is such an electric 
shower of all-illuminating brilliancy, penetration, recogni- 
tion, wise discernment, just enthusiasm, humour, grace, 
patience, courage, love, and in fine of spontaneous noble- 
ness of mind and intellect, as I know not where to parallel ! 
I have asked myself, Ought all this to be lost, or kept for 
myself, and the brief time that now belongs to me ? Can 
nothing of it be saved, then, for the worthy that still 
remain among these roaring myriads of profane unworthy ? 
I really must consider it farther ; and already I feel it to 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 467 

have become uncertain to me whether at least this poor 
notebook ought to be burnt ere my decease, or left to its 
chances among my survivors ? As to '* talent," epistolary 
and other, these letters, I perceive, equal and surpass 
whatever of best I know to exist in that kind ; for " talent," 
*' genius," or whatever we may call it, what an evidence, 
if my little woman needed that to me ! Not all the Sands 
and Eliots and babbling co/i2ie of " celebrated scribbling 
women " that have strutted over the world, in my time, 
could, it seems to me, if all boiled down and distilled to 
essence, make one such woman. But it is difficult to 
make these letters fairly legible ; except myself there is 
nobody at all that can completely read them as they now 
are. They abound in allusions, very full of meaning in 
this circle, but perfectly dark and void in all others. 
Coterie-sp7'acJic, as the Germans call it, ** family circle 
dialect," occurs every line or two ; nobody ever so rich in 
that kind as she ; ready to pick up every diamond-spark, 
out of the common floor dust, and keep it brightly avail- 
able ; so that hardly, I think, in any house, w^as there 
more of coterie-sprache, shining innocently, with a perpet- 
ual expressiveness and twinkle generally of quiz and real 
humour about it, than in ours. She mainly was the cre- 
atress of all this ; unmatchable for quickness (and trueness) 
in regard to it, and in her letters it is continually recurring ; 
shedding such a lambency of " own fireside" over every- 
thing, if you are in the secret. Ah me, ah me ! At 
least, I have tied up that bundle (the two letters touching 
on '* Friedrich " have a paper round them ; the first 
written in Edinburgh, it appears now !) 



468 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

July 9. Day again all spent in searching and sorting a 
box of hers, fall of strange and sad memorials of her 
mother, with a few of father and infant self (put up in 
1842), full of poignant meanings to her then and to me 
now. Her own christening cap is there e.g. ; the lancet 
they took her father's blood with (and so killed him, as 
she always thought); father's door-plate; ''commission 
in Perth Fencibles," etc, ; two or three Christmas notes 
of mine, which I could not read without almost sheer 
weeping. 

It must have been near the end of October 1863, 
when I returned home from my ride, weather soft and 
muddy, humour dreary and oppressed as usual (nightmare 
^' Friedrich " still pressing heavily as ever), but as usual 
also, a bright little hope in me that now I was across the 
muddy element, and the lucid twenty minutes of my day 
were again at hand. To my disappointment my Jeannie 
was not here ; " had gone to see her cousin in the city," — 
a Mrs. Godby, widow of an important post-official, once 
in Edinburgh, where he had wedded this cousin, and 
died leaving children ; and in virtue of whom she and 
they had been brought to London a year or two ago, to 
a fine situation as *' matron of the Post-office establish- 
ment " ('' forty maids under her etc. etc., and well man- 
aged by her ") in St. Martin's-le-Grand. She was a good 
enough creature, this Mrs. Godby (Binnie had been her 
Scotch name ; she is now Mrs. Something-else, and very 
prosperous). My Jeannie, in those early times, was 
anxious to be kind to her in the new scene, and had her 
often here (as often as, for my convenience, seemed to 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 469 

the loyal heart permissible), and was herself, on calls and 
little tea-visits, perhaps still oftener there. A perfectly 
harmless Scotch cousin, polite and prudent ; almost 
prettyish (in spite of her projecting upper-teeth) ; with 
good wise instincts ; but no developed intelligence in the 
articulate kind. Her mother, I think, was my mother- 
in-law's cousin or connection ; and the young widow 
and her London friend were always well together. This 
was, I believe, the last visit my poor wife ever made 
her; and the last but two she ever received from her, 
so miserably unexpected were the issues on this side of 
the matter ! 

We had been at the Grange for perhaps four or five 
weeks that autumn ; utterly quiet, nobody there besides 
ourselves ; Lord Ashburton being in the weakest state, 
health and life visibly decaying. I was permitted to be 
perdue till three o'clock daily, and sat writing about 
Poland I remember ; mournful, but composed and digni- 
fiedly placid the time was to us all. My Jeannie did not 
complain of health beyond wont, except on one point, 
that her right arm was strangely lame, getting lamer and 
lamer, so that at last she could not ** do her hair herself," 
but had to call in a maid to fasten the hind part for her. 
I remember her sadly dispirited looks, when I came into 
her in the morning with my enquiries ; " No sleep," too 
often the response ; and this lameness, though httle was 
said of it, a most discouraging thing. Oh, what dis- 
couragements, continual distresses, pains and miseries my 
poor little darling had to bear ; remedy for them nowhere, 
speech about them useless, best to be avoided, — as. 



470 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

except on pressure from myself, it nobly was ! This 
part of her life-history was always sad to me ; but it is 
tenfold more now, as I read in her old letters, and grad- 
ually reaHse, as never before, the continual grinding 
wretchedness of it, and how, like a winged Psyche, she 
so soared above it, and refused to be chained or degraded 
by it. *' Neuralgic rheumatism," the doctors called this 
thing : " neuralgia " by itself, as if confessing that they 
knew not what to do with it. Some kind of hot half-cor- 
rosive ointment was the thing prescribed ; which did, for 
a little while each time remove the pain mostly, the lame- 
ness not ; and I remember to have once seen her beautiful 
arm (still so beautiful) all stained with spots of burning, so 
zealous had she been in trying, though with small faith 
in the prescription. This lasted all the time we were 
at the Grange ; it had begun before, and things rather 
seemed to be worsening after we returned. Alas, I sup- 
pose it was the siege of the citadel that was now going 
on ; disease and pain had for thirty or more years been 
trampling down the outworks, were now got to the 
nerves, to the citadel, and were bent on storming that. 

I was disappointed, but not sorry at the miss of my 
'^ twenty minutes;" that my little woman, in her weak 
languid state, had got out for exercise, was gladness ; and 
I considered that the ''twenty minutes" was only post- 
poned, not lost, but would be repaid me presently with 
interest. After sleep and dinner (all forgotten now), I 
remember still to have been patient, cheerfully hopeful ; 
** she is coming, for certain, and will have something nice 
to tell me of news etc., as she always has ! " In that 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 4/1 

mood I lay on the sofa, not sleeping, quietly waiting, 
perhaps for an hour-and-half more. She had gone in an 
omnibu^ and was to return in one. At this time she had 
no carriage. With great difficulty I had got her induced, 
persuaded and commanded, to take two drives weekly in 
a hired brougham (*' more difficult}^ in persuading you to 
go into expense, than other men have to persuade their 
wives to keep out of k ! ") On these terms she had 
agreed to the two drives weekly, and found a great bene- 
fit in them ; but on no terms could I get her to consent to 
go, herself, into the adventure of purchasing a brougham 
etc., though she knew it to be a fixed purpose, and only 
delayed by absolute want of time on my part. She could 
have done it, too, employed the right people to do it, 
right well, and knew how beneficial to her health it would 
likely be : but no, there was a refined delicacy which 
would have perpetually prevented her ; and my '' time," 
literally, was Zero. I believe, for the last seven years of 
that nightmare " Friedrich," I did not write the smallest 
message to friends, or undertake the least business, ex- 
cept upon plain compulsion of necessity. How lucky that, 
next autumn, I did actually, in spite of *' Friedrich," un- 
dertake this of the brougham; it-is a mercy of heaven to 
me for the rest of my life ! and oh ! why was it not under- 
taken, in spite of all *' Friedrichs " and nightmares, years 
before ! That had been still luckier, perhaps endlessly 
so ? but that was not to be. 

The visit to Mrs. Godby had been pleasant, and gone 
all well ; but now, dusk falling, it had to end — again by 
omnibus as ill-luck would have it. Mrs. G. sent one of 



472 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

her maids as escort. Atthe corner of Cheapside the om- 
nibus was waited for (some excavations going on near by, 
as for many years past they seldom cease to do) ; Chelsea 
omnibus came ; my darhng was in the act of stepping in 
(maid stupid and of no assistance), when a cab came rap- 
idly from behind, and, forced by the near excavation, 
seemed as if it would drive over her, such her frailty and 
want of 'speed. She desperately determined to get on 
the flag pavement again ; desperately leaped, and did get 
upon the curbstone ; but found she was faUing over upon 
the flags, and that she would alight on her right or neu- 
ralgic arm, which would be ruin ; spasmodically struggled 
against this for an instant or two (maid nor nobody assist- 
ing), and had to fall on the neuralgic arm, — ruined other- 
wise far worse, for, as afterwards appeared, the muscles 
of the thigh-bone or sinews attaching them had been torn 
in that spasmodic instant or two ; and for three days 
coming the torment was excessive, while in the right arm 
there was no neuralgia perceptible during that time, nor 
any very manifest new injury afterwards either. The ca- 
lamity had happened, however, and in that condition, my 
poor darling, " put into a cab " by the humane people, as 
her one request to them, arrived at this door, — "later" 
than I expected; and after such a ''drive from Cheap- 
side " as may be imagined ! 

I remember well my joy at the sound of her wheels 
ending in a knock ; then my surprise at*the delay in her 
coming up ; at the singular silence o£ the maids when 
questioned as to that. Thereupon my rushing down, 
finding her in the hands of Larkin and them, in the great- 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 473 

est agony of pain and helplessness I had ever seen her in. 
The noble little soul, she had determined I was not to be 
shocked by it ; Larkin then lived next door, assiduous to 
serve us in all things (did maps, indexes, even joinerings 
etc. etc.;) him she had resolved to charge with it; alas, 
alas, as if you could have saved me, noble heroine and 
martyr ? Poor Larkin was standing helpless ; he and I 
carried her upstairs in an armchair to the side of her bed, 
into which she crept by aid of her hands. In few min- 
utes, Barnes (her wise old doctor) was here, assured me 
there were no bones broken, no joint out, applied his band- 
agings and remedies, and seemed to think the matter was 
slighter than it proved to be, — the spasmodic tearing of 
sinews being still a secret to him. 

For fifty hours the pain was excruciating ; after that it 
rapidly abated, and soon altogether ceased, except when 
the wounded limb was meddled with never so little. The 
poor patient was heroic, and had throughout been. 
Within a week, she had begun contriving rope machin- 
eries, leverages, and could not only pull her bell, but lift 
and shift herself about, by means of her arms, into any 
coveted posture, and was, as it were, mistress of the mis- 
chance. She had her poor little room arranged, under 
her eye, to a perfection of beauty and convenience. 
Nothing that was possible to her had been omitted (I 
remember one little thing the apothecary had furnished ; 
an artificial champagne cask ; turn a screw and your 
champagne spurted up, and when you had a spoonful, 
could be instantly closed down ; with what a bright face 
she would show me this in action !) In fact her sick- 



474 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

room looked pleasanter than many a drawing-room (all 
the weakness and suffering of it nobly veiled away) ; the 
select of her lady-friends were admitted for short whiles 
and liked it well ; to me, whenever I entered, all spoke 
of cheerfully patient hope, the bright side of the cloud 
always assiduously tuned out for me, in my dreary la- 
bours ! I might have known, too, better than I did, that 
it had a dark side withal ; sleeplessness, sickliness, utter 
weakness; and that *' the silver lining" was due to my 
darling's self mainly, and to the inextinguishable loyalty 
and hope that dwelt in her. But I merely thought, 
*' How lucky beyond all my calculations ! " 

I still right well remember the night Avhen her bed- 
room door (double-door) suddenly opened upon me into 
the drawing-room, and she came limping and stooping on 
her staff, so gracefully and Avith such a childlike joy and 
triumph, to irradiate my solitude. Never again will any 
such bright vision of gladdening surprise illuminate the 
darkness for me in that room or any other ? She was in 
her Indian dressing-gown, absolutely beautiful, leaning 
on her nibby staff (a fine hazel, cut and polished from the 
Drumlanrig woods, by some friend for my service) ; and 
with such a kindly brilliancy and loving innocence of ex- 
pression, like that of a little child, unconquerable by weak- 
ness and years ! A hot-tempered creature, too, few hot- 
ter, on momentary provocation ; but what a fund of soft 
affection, hope, and melodious innocence and goodness, 
to temper all that lightning ! I doubt, candidly, if I ever 
saw a nobler human soul than this which (alas, alas, never 
rightly valued till now !) accompanied all my steps for 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 475 

forty years. Blind and deaf that we are : oh, think, if 
thou yet love anybody living, wait not till death sweep 
down the paltry little dust-clouds and idle dissonances of 
the moment, and all be at last so mournfully clear and 
beautiful, when it is too late ! 

We thought all was now come or fast coming right 
again, and that, in spite of that fearful mischance, we 
should have a good winter, and get our dismal " misery 
of a book " done, or almost done. My own hope and 
prayer was and had long been continually that ; hers too, 
I could not doubt, though hint never came from her to 
that effect, no hint or look, much less the smallest word, 
at any time, by any accident. But I felt well enough 
how it was crushingr down her existence, as it was crush- 
ing down my own ; and the thought that she had not 
been at the choosing of it, and yet must suffer so for it, 
was occasionally bitter to me. But the practical conclu- 
sion always was, " Get done with it, get done with it ! 
For the savins^ of us both, that is the one outlook." And, 
sure enough, I did stand by that dismal task with all my 
tim.e and all my means ; day and night wrestling with it, 
as with the ugliest dragon, which blotted out the day- 
light and the rest of the world to me, till I should get it 
slain. There was perhaps some merit in this ; but also, I 
fear, a demerit. Well, well, I could do no better ; sit- 
ting smoking upstairs, on nights when sleep was impossi- 
ble, I had thoughts enough ; not permitted to rustle amid 
my rugs and wrappages lest I awoke her, and startled all 
chance of sleep away from her. Weak little darling, thy 
sleep is now unbroken ; still and serene in the eternities 



47^ JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

(as the Most High God has ordered for us), and nobody 
more in this world will wake for my wakefulness. 

My poor woman was what we called '' getting well" 
for several weeks still ; she could walk very little, indeed 
she never more walked much in this world ; but it seems 
she was out driving, and again out, hopefully for some 
time. 

Towards the end of November (perhaps it was In De- 
cember), she caught some whiff of cold, which, for a day 
or two, we hoped would pass, as many such had done ; 
but on the contrary, it began to get worse, soon rapidly 
worse, and developed itself into that frightful universal 
" neuralgia," under which it seemed as if no force of 
human vitality would be able long to stand. *' Disease 
of the nerves " (poisoning of the very channels of sensa- 
tion) ; such was the name the doctors gave it ; and for 
the rest, could do nothing farther with it ; well had they 
only attempted nothing ! I used to compute that they, 
poor souls, had at least reinforced the disease to twice its 
natural amount, such the pernicious effect of all their 
'* remedies " and appliances, opiates, etc. etc. ; which 
every one of them (and there came many) applied anew, 
and always with the like result. Oh, what a sea of agon}^ 
my darling was immersed in, month after month ! Sleep 
had fled. A hideous pain, of which she used to say that 
** common honest pain, were it cutting off one's flesh or 
sawing of one's bones would be a luxury In comparison," 
seemed to have beglrdled her, at all moments and on 
every side. Her intellect was clear as starlight, and con- 
tinued so ; the clearest intellect among us all ; but she 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 477 

dreaded that this too must give way. ** Dear," said she 
to me, on two occasions, with such a look and tone as I 
shall never forget, " Promise me that you will not put 
me into a mad-house, however this go. Do you promise 
me, now?" I solemnly did. ''Not if I do quite lose 
my wits ? " " Never, my darling ; oh, compose thy 
poor terrified heart ! " Another time, she punctually 
directed me about her burial ; how her poor bits of pos- 
sessions were to be distributed, this to one friend, that to 
another (in help of their necessities, for it was the poor 
sort she had chosen, old indigent Haddington figures). 
What employment in the solitary night watches, on her 
bed of pain ! Ah me, ah me ! 

The house by day, especially, was full of confusion ; 
Maggie Welsh had come at my solicitation, and took a 
great deal of patient trouble (herself of an almost obsti- 
nate placidity), doing her best among the crowd of doctors, 
sick- nurses, visitors. I mostly sat aloft, sunk, or endeav- 
ouring to be sunk, in work ; and, till evening, only visited 
the sick-room at intervals, first thing in the morning, per- 
haps about noon again, and always (if permissible) at three 
P.M., when riding time cam.e, etc. etc. If permissible, 
for sometimes she was reported as "asleep" when I 
passed, though it oftenest proved to have been quies- 
cence of exhaustion, not real sleep. To this hour it is 
inconceivable to me how I could continue "working ; " 
as I nevertheless certainly for much the most part did ! 
About three times or so, on a morning, it struck me, 
with a cold shudder as of conviction, that here did lie 
death ; that my world must go to shivers, down to the 



478 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

abyss; and that "victory" never so complete, up in my 
garret, would not save her, nor indeed be possible with- 
out her. I remember my morning walks, three of them 
or so, crushed under that ghastly spell. But again I said 
to myself, **No man, doct(»r or other, knows anything 
about it. There is still what appetite there was ; that I 
can myself understand ; " — and generally, before the day 
was done, I had decided to hope again, to keep hoping 
and working. The aftercast of the doctors' futile opiates 
were generally the worst phenomena ; I remember her 
once coming out to the drawing-room sofa, perhaps about 
midnight ; decided for trying that. Ah me, in vain, pal- 
pably in vain ; and what a look in those bonny eyes, 
vividly present to me yet ; unaidable, and hke to break 
one's heart ! 

One scene with a Catholic sick-nurse I also remember 
well. 

A year or two before this time, she had gone with 
some acquaintance who was in quest of sick-nurses to an 
establishment under Catholic auspices, in Brompton 
somewhere (the acquaintance, a Protestant herself, ex- 
pressing her " certain knowledge" that this CathoHc was 
the one good kind) ; — where accordingly the aspect of 
matters, and especially the manner of the old French lady 
who was matron and manager, produced such a favour- 
able impression, that I recollect my little woman saying, 
** If I need a sick-nurse, that is the place I will apply at." 
Appliance now was made ; a nun duly sent, in conse- 
quence : — this was in the early weeks of the illness ; 
household sick-nursing (Maggie's and that of the maids 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 479 

alternately) having sufficed till now. The nurse was a 
good-natured young Irish nun ; with a good deal of 
brogue, a tolerable share of blarney too, all varnished to 
the due extent ; and, for three nights or so, she answered 
very well. On the fourth night, to our surprise, though 
we found afterwards it was the common usage, there ap- 
peared a new nun, new and very different, — an elderly 
French ** young lady," with broken English enough for 
her occasions, and a look of rigid earnestness, in fact with 
the air of a life broken down into settled despondency 
and abandonment of all hope that was not ultra-secular. 
An unfavorable change ; though the poor lady seemed 
intelligent, well-intentioned ; and her heart-broken aspect 
inspired pity and good wishes, if no attraction. She com- 
menced by rather ostentatious performance of her noctur- 
nal pray^ers, ** Beata Maria," or I know not what other 
Latin stuff; which her poor patient regarded with great 
vigilance, though still with what charity and tolerance 
were possible. " You won't understand what I am say- 
ing or doing," said the nun ; " don't mind me." '* Per- 
haps I understand it better than yourself," said the other 
(who had Latin from of old) and did ** mind " more than 
was expected. The dreary hours, no sleep, as usual, 
went on ; and we heard nothing, till about three A.M. 
I was awakened (I, what never happened before or 
after, though my door was always left slightly ajar, 
and I was right above, usually a deep sleeper), — awak- 
ened by a vehement continuous ringing of my poor dar- 
ling's bell. I flung on my dressing-gown, awoke Maggie 
by a word, and hurried down. " Put away that woman I "* 



48o JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

cried my poor Jeannie vehemently ; " away, not to come 
back." I opened the door into the drawing-room ; 
pointed to the sofa there, w^iich had wraps and pillows 
plenty ; and the poor nun at once withdrew, looking and 
murmuring her regrets and apologies. ** What was she 
doing to thee, my own poor little woman ? " No very 
distinct answer was to be had then (and afterwards there 
was always a dislike to speak of that hideous bit of time 
at all, except on necessity) ; but I learned in general, 
that during the heavy hours, loaded, every moment of 
them, with its misery, the nun had gradually come for- 
ward with ghostly consolations, ill received, no doubt ; 
and at length, with something more express, about 
"Blessed Virgin," ''Agnus Dei," or whatever it might 
be ; to which the answer had been, '' Hold your tongue, 
I tell you : or I will ring the bell ! " Upon which the 
nun had rushed forward with her dreadfullest supernal ad- 
monitions, "impenitent sinner," etc., and a practical at- 
tempt to prevent the ringing. Which only made it more 
immediate and more decisive. The poor woman ex- 
pressed to Miss Welsh much regret, disappointment, real 
vexation and self-blame ; lay silent, after that, amid her 
rugs ; and disappeared, next morning, in a polite and soft 
manner : never to reappear, she or any consort of hers. 
I was really sorry for this heavy-laden, pious or quasi- 
pious and almost broken-hearted Frenchwoman, — though 
we could perceive she was under the foul tutelage and 
guidance, probably, of some dirty muddy-minded semi- 
felonious proselytising Irish priest. But there was no 
help for her in this instance ; probably, in all England, 



JANE WELSH CAKLYLE. 48 1 

she could not have found an agonised human soul more 
nobly and hopelessly superior to her and her poisoned 
gingerbread " consolations." This incident threw sud- 
denly a glare of strange and far from pleasant light over 
the sublime Popish " sister of charity" movement ; — and 
none of us had the least notion to apply there henceforth. 
The doctors were many ; Dr. Ouain (who would take 
no fees) the most assiduous ; Dr. Blakiston (ditto) from 
St. Leonard's, express one time ; speaking hope, always, 
both of these, and most industrious to help, with many 
more, whom I did not even see. When any new miracu- 
lous kind of doctor was recommended as such, my poor 
struggling martyr, conscious too of grasping at mere 
straws, could not but wish to see him ; and he came, did 
his mischief, and went away. We had even (by sanction 
of Barnes, and indeed of sound sense never so scep- 
tical) a trial of " animal magnetism ; " two magnetisers, 
first a man, then a quack woman (evidently a conscious 
quack I perceived her to be), who at least did no ill, ex- 
cept entirely disappoint (if that were much an exception). 
By everybody it had been agreed that a change of scene 
(as usual, when all else has failed) was the thing to be 
looked to : " St. Leonard's as soon as the weather will 
permit ! " said Dr. Ouain and everybody, especially Dr. 
Blakiston, who generously offered his house withal ; 
" definitely more room than we need ! " said the sanguine 
B. always ; and we dimly understood too, from his wife 
(Bessie Barnet, an old inmate here, and of distinguished 
qualities and fortunes), that the doctor would accept re- 
muneration ; though this proved quite a mistake. The 
31 



4^2 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

remuneration he had expected was to make a distinguished 
cure over the heads of so many London rivals. Money 
for the use of two rooms in his house, we might have 
anticipated, but did not altogether, he would regard with 
sovereign superiority. 

It was early in March, perhaps March 2, 1864, a cold- 
blowing damp and occasionally raining day, when the flit- 
ting thither took effect. Never shall I see again so sad 
and dispiriting a scene ; hardly was the day of her last 
departure for Haddington, departure of what had once 
been she (the instant of which they contrived to hide from 
me here), so miserable ; for she at least was now suffering 
nothing, but safe in victorious rest for evermore, though 
then beyond expression suffering. There was a railway 
invalid carriage, so expressly adapted, so etc., and evi- 
dently costing some ten or twelve times the common ex- 
pense : this drove up to the door ; Maggie and she to go 
in this. Well do I recollect her look as they bore her 
downstairs : full of nameless sorrow, yet of clearness, 
practical management, steady resolution ; in a low small 
voice she gave her directions, once or twice, as the pro- 
cess went on, and practically it was under her wise man- 
agement. The invalid carriage was hideous to look 
upon ; black, low, base-looking, and you entered it by 
window, as if it were a hearse. I knew well what she 
was thinking; but her eye never quailed, she gave her 
directions as heretofore ; and, in a minute or two, we 
were all away. Twice or oftener in the journey, I visited 
Maggie and her in their prison. No complaint : but the 
invalid carriage, in which I doubt if you could actually 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 483 

sit upright (if you were of man's stature or of tall 
woman's >, was evidently a catch-penny humbug, and she 
freely admitted afterwards that she would never enter it 
again, and that in a coupe to ourselves she would have 
been far better. At St. Leonard's, I remember, there 
was considerable waiting for the horses that should have 
been ready, a thrice bleak and drear>' scene to us all (she 
silent as a child) : the arrival, the dismounting, the ascent 
of her quasi-bier up Blakiston's long stairs, etc. , etc. Ah 
me ! Dr. Blakiston was really kind. The sea was hoarsely 
moaning at our hand, the bleared skies sinking into dark- 
ness overhead. Within doors, however, all was really 
nice and well-provided (thanks to the skilful Mrs. B.) ; 
excellent drawing-room, and sitting-room, with bed for 
her ; bedroom upstairs for Maggie, ditto ; for servant, 
within call, etc. etc. ; all clean and quiet A kind of hope 
did rise, perhaps even in her, at sight of all this. ^ly 
mood, when I bethink me, was that of deep misery frozen 
torpid ; singularly dark and stony, strange to me now ; 
due in part to the ** Friedrich " incubus then. I had to 
be home again that night, by the last train ; miscalcu- 
lated the distance, found no vehicle ; and never in my 
life sav^ed a train by so infinitesimally small a miss. I 
had taken mournfully tender leave of my poor much- 
suffering heroine (speaking hope to her, when I could 
readily have lifted up my voice and wept). I was to re- 
turn in so many days, if nothing went wrong ; at once, if 
anything did. I lost nothing by that hurried ride, ex- 
cept, at London Station, or in the final cab, a velvet cap, 
of her old making, which I much regretted, and still 



484 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

regret. " I will make you another cap, if I get better,*' 
said she lovingly, at our next meeting : but she never 
did, or perhaps well could. What matter? That would 
have made me still sorrier, had I had it by me now. 
Wae's me, wae's me ! ^ 

I was twice or perhaps thrice at St. Leonard's (War- 
rior Square, Blakiston's house right end of it to the sea). 
Once I recollect being taken by Forster, who was going 
on a kind of birthday holiday with his wife. Blakiston 
spoke always in a tone of hope, and there really was 
some improvement ; but, alas, it was small and slow. 
Deep misery and pain still too visible : and all we could 
say was, " We must try St. Leonard's farther ; I shall be 
able to shift down to you in May ! " My little darling 
looked sweet gratitude upon me (so thankful always for 
the day of small things !) but heaviness, sorrow, and want 
of hope was written on her face ; the sight filling me with 
sadness, though I always strove to be of B.'s opinion. 
One of my volumes (4th, I conclude) was coming out at 
that time ; during the Forster visit, I remember there 
was some review of this volume, seemingly of a shallow 
impudent description, concerning which I privately ap- 
plauded F.'s silent demeanour, and not B.'s vocal, one 
evening at F.'s inn. The dates, or even the numberiof 
these sad preliminary visits, I do not now recollect : they 
were all of a sad and ambiguous complexion. At home, 
too, there daily came a letter from Maggie ; but this in 
general, though it strove to look hopeful, was ambiguity's 

^ Wae is the Scotch adjective, too. Wae, wae ; there is no word in Eng- 
lish that will express what I feel. Wae is my habitual mood in these months. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 485 

own self! Much driving in the open air, appetite where 
it was, sleep at least ditto ; all this, I kept saying to my- 
self, must lead to something good. 

Dr. Blakiston, it turned out, would accept no payment 
for his rooms ; ** a small furnished house of our own" be- 
came the only outlook, therefore ; and was got, and en- 
tered into, sometime in April, some weeks before my 
arrival in ]\Iay. Brother John, before this, had come to 
visit me here ; ran down to St. Leonard's one day : and, 
I could perceive, was silently intending to pass the sum- 
mer with us at St. Leonard's. He did so, in an innocent 
self-soothing, kindly and harmless way (the good soul, if 
good wishes would always suffice !) and occasionally was of 
some benefit to us, though occasionally also not. It was a 
quiet sunny day of May when we went down together ; I 
read most of ** Sterne's Life " (just out, by some Irish- 
man, named Fitz-something) ; looked out on the old 
Wilhelmus Conquestor localities ; on Lewes, for one 
thing (de " Le Ouse,"— Ouse the dirty river there is still 
named); on Pevensey, Bexhill, etc., with no unmixed 
feeling, yet not with absolute misery, as we rolled along. 
I forget if Maggie Welsh was still there at St. Leonard's. 
My darling, certain enough, came down to meet us, at- 
tempting to sit at dinner (by my request, or wish already 
signified) ; but too evidently it would not do. Mary 
Craik was sent for (from Belfast) instead of Maggie Welsh 
who *' was wanted " at Liverpool, and did then or a few 
days afterwards return thither, Mary Craik succeeding, 
who was very gentle, quiet, prudent, and did well in her 
post. 



486 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

I had settled all my book affairs the best I could. I 
got at once installed into my poor closet on the ground- 
floor, with window to the north (^keep that open, and, the 
door ajar, there will be fresh air !) Book box was at 
once converted into book press (of rough deal, but 
covered with newspaper veneering where necessary), and 
fairly held and kept at hand the main books I wanted ; 
camp-desk, table or two, drawer or two, were put in im- 
mediate seasonablest use. In this closet there was hardly 
room to turn ; and I felt as if crushed, all my apparatus 
and I, into a stocking, and there bidden work. But I 
really did it withal, to a respectable degree, printer never 
pausing for me, work daily going on ; and this doubtless 
was my real anchorage in that sea of trouble, sadness and 
confusion, for the two months it endured. I have spoken 
elsewhere of my poor darling's hopeless wretchedness, 
which daily cut my heart, and might have cut a very 
stranger's : those drives with her (" daily, one of your 
drives is with me," and I saw her gratitude, poor soul, 
looking out through her despair ; and sometimes she 
would try to talk to me about street sights, persons, etc. ; 
and it was like a bright lamp flickering out into extinc- 
tion again) ; drives mainly on the streets to escape the 
dust, or still dismaller if we did venture into the haggard, 
parched lanes, and their vile whirlwinds. Oh, my dar- 
ling, I would have cut the universe in two for thee, and 
this was all I had to share with thee, as we were ! 

St. Leonard's, now that I look back upon it, is very 
odious to my fancy, yet not without points of interest. I 
rode a great deal too, two hours and a half my lowest 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 487 

stint ; bathed also, and remember the bright morning air, 
bright Beachy Head and everlasting sea, as things of 
blessing to me ; the old lanes of Sussex too, old cottages, 
peasants, old vanishing ways of life, were abundantly 
touching ; but the new part, and it was all getting " new," 
was uniformly detestable and even horrible to me. Noth- 
ing but dust, noise, squalor, and the universal tearing and 
digging as if of gigantic human swine, not finding any 
worm or roots that would be useful to them ! The very 
" houses " they were building, each " a congeries of rot- 
ten bandboxes " (as our own poor " furnished house " had 
taught me, if I still needed teaching), were ** built " as if 
for nomad apes, not for men. The "moneys" to be 
realised, the etc. etc., does or can God's blessing rest 011 
all that ? My dialogues with the dusty sceneries there 
(Fairlight, Crowhurst, Battle, Rye even, and Winchelsea), 
with the novelties and the antiquities, were very sad for 
most part, and very grim ; here and there with a kind of 
wild interest too. Battle I did arrive at, one evening, 
through the chaotic roads ; Battle, in the rustle or silence 
of incipient dusk, was really affecting to me ; and I saw 
to be a good post of fence for King Harold, and wondered 
if the Bastard did ** land at Pevensey," or not near Hast- 
ings somewhere (Bexhill or so ?) and what the march- 
ings and preliminaries had really been. Faithful study, 
continued for long years or decades, upon the old Nor- 
man romances etc., and upon the ground, would still tell 
some fit person, I believe ; but there shriek the railway 
" shares " at such and such a premium ; let us make for 
home ! My brother, for a few times at first, used to ac- 



488 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

company me on those rides, but soon gave in (not being 
bound to it like me) ; and Noggs ' and I had nothing for 
it but solitary contemplation and what mute '' dialogue" 
with nature and art we could each get up for himself. I 
usually got home towards nine P.M. (half-past eight the 
rigorous rule) ; and in a grey dusty evening, from some 
windy hill-tops, or in the intricate old narrow lanes of a 
thousand years ago, one's reflections were apt to be of 
a sombre sort. My poor little Jeannie (thanks to her, the 
loving one !) would not fail to be waiting for me, and sit 
trying to talk or listen, while I had tea ; trying her best, 
sick and weary as she was ; but always very soon with- 
drew after that ; quite worn down and longing for solitary 
silence, and even a sleepless bed, as was her likeliest 
prospect for most part. How utterly sad is all that ! yes ; 
and there is a kind of devout blessing in it too (so nobly 
w^as it borne, and conquered in a sort) ; and I would not 
have it altered now, after what has come, if I even could. 

We lived in the place called " Marina" (what a 
name !) almost quite at the west end of St. Leonard's ; a 
new house (bearing marks of thrifty, wise, and modestly- 
elegant habits in the old lady owners just gone from it) ; 
and for the rest, decidedly the worst built house I have 
ever been within. A scandal to human nature, it and its 
fellows ; which are everywhere, and are not objected to 
by an enlightened public, as appears ! No more of it, 
except our farewell malison ; and pity for the poor old 
ladies who perhaps are still there ! 

My poor suffering woman had at first, for some weeks, 

^ Carlyle's house. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 489 

a vestige of improvement, or at least of new hope and 
alleviation thereby. She " slept" (or tried for sleep) in 
the one tolerable bedroom ; seconti floor, fronting the 
sea, darkened and ventilated, made the tidiest we could ; 
Miss Craik slept close by. I remember our settlings for 
the night ; my last journey up, to sit a few minutes, 
and see that the adjustments were complete ; a '* Nun's 
lamp " was left glimmering within reach. My poor little 
woman strove to look as contented as she could, and to 
exchange a few friendly words with me as our last for the 
night. Then in the morning, there sometimes had been 
an hour or two of sleep ; what news for us all ! And 
even brother John, for a while, was admitted to step up 
and congratulate, after breakfast. But this didn't last ; 
hardly into June, even in that slight degree. And the 
days were always heavy ; so sad to her, so painful, dreary 
without hope. What a time, even in my reflex of it I 
Dante's Purgatory I could now liken it to ; both of us, es- 
pecially my loved one by me. ** bent like corbels," under 
our unbearable loads as we wended on. yet in me always 
with a kind of steady glimmering hope ! Dante's Purga- 
tory, not his Hell, for there was a sacred blessedness in 
it withal ; not wholly the society of devils, but among 
their hootings and tormentings something still pointing 
afar off towards heaven withal. Thank God ! 

At the beginning of June, she still had the feeling 
we were better here than elsewhere ; by her direction, I 
warned the people we would not quit at ** the end of 
June." as had been bargained, but " of July," as was also 
within our option, on due notice given. End of June 



490 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

proved to be the time, all the same ; the old ladies (justly) 
refusing to revoke, and taking their full claim of money, 
poor old souls ; very polite otherwise. Middle of June 
had not come when that bedroom became impossible ; 
" roaring of the sea," once a lullaby, now a little too loud, 
on some high-tide or west wind, kept her entirely awake. 
I exchanged bedrooms with her ; " sea always a lullaby 
to me ; " but, that night, even I did not sleep .one wink ; 
upon which John exchanged with me, who lay to rear- 
ward, as I till then had done. Rearward we looked over 
a Mews (from this room) ; fromr her now room, into the 
paltry little " garden ; " overhead of both were clay cliffs, 
multifarious dog and cock establishments (unquenchable 
by bribes paid), now and then stray troops of asses, etc. 
etc.; what a lodging for poor sufferers ! Sleep became 
worse and worse ; we spoke of shifting to Bexhill ; " fine 
airy house to be let there " (fable when we went to look) ; 
then some quiet old country inn ? She drove one day 
(John etc. escorting) to Battle, to examine ; nothing there, 
or less than nothing. Chelsea home was at least quiet, 
wholesomely aired and clean ; but she had an absolute 
horror of her old home bedroom and drawing-room, where 
she had endured such torments latterly. " We will new- 
paper them, re-arrange them," said Miss Bromley; and 
this was actually done in August following. That '* new 
papering " was somehow to me the saddest of specula- 
tions. '* Alas, darling, is that all we can do for thee ? " 
The weak weakest of resources ; and yet what other 
had we ? As June went on, things became worse and 
worse. The sequel is mentioned elsewhere. I will here 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 49I 

put down only the successive steps and approximate 
dates of it. 

June 29. After nine nights totally without sleep she 
announced to us, with a fixity and with a clearness all her 
own, that she would leave this place to-morrow for Lon- 
don ; try there, not in her own house, but in Mrs. Forster's 
(Palace Gate house, Kensington), which was not yet hor- 
rible to her. June 30 (John escorting), she set off by the 
noon train. Miss Bromley had come down to see her ; 
could only be allowed to see her in stepping into the train, 
so desperate was the situation, the mood so adequate to 
it ; a moment never to be forgotten by me ! How I 
" worked " afterwards that day is not on record. I dimly 
remember walking back with Miss Bromley and her lady- 
friend to their hotel ; talking to them (as out of the heart 
of icebergs) ; and painfully somehow sinking into icy or 
stony rest, worthy of oblivion. 

At Forster's there could hardly be a more dubious 
problem. My poor wandering martyr did get snatches 
of sleep there ; but found the room so noisy, the scene so 
foreign, etc., she took a farther resolution in the course 
of the night and its watchings. Sent for John, the first 
thing in the morning ; bade him get places in the night- 
train for Annandale (my sister Mary's ; all kindness poor 
Mary, whom she always liked) ; *' The Gill ; we are not 
yet at the end there ; and Nithsdale too is that way ! " 
John failed not, I dare say, in representations, counter- 
considerations, but she was coldly positive ; and go they 
did, express of about 330 miles. Poor Mary was loyal 
kindness itself ; poor means made noble and more than 



492 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

opulent by the wealth of love and ready will and inven- 
tion. I was seldom so agreeably surprised as by a letter 
in my darling's own hand, narrating the heads of the ad- 
venture briefly, with a kind of defiant satisfaction, and 
informing me that she had slept that first Gill night for^ 
almost nine hours ! Whose joy like ours, durst we have 
hoped it would last, or even though we durst not ! She 
stayed about a week still there ; Mary and kindred eager 
to get her carriages (rather helplessly in that particular), 
to do and attempt for her whatever was possible ; but the 
success, in sleep especially, grew less and less. In about 
a week she went on to Nithsdale, to Dr. and Mrs. Russell, 
and there, slowly improving, continued. Improvement 
pretty constant ; fresh air, driving, silence, kindness. 
By the time Mary Craik had got me flitted home to 
Chelsea, and herself went for Belfast, all this had steadily 
begun ; and there were regular letters from her etc. , and 
I could work here with such an alleviation of spirits as had 
long been a stranger to me. In August (rooms all 
*' new-papered," poor little Jeannie !) she came back to 
me, actually there in the cab (John settling) when I ran 
downstairs, looking out on me with the old kind face, a 
little graver, I might have thought, but as quiet, as com- 
posed and wise and good as ever. This was the end, I 
might say, of by far the most tragic part of our tragedy : 
Act 5th, though there lay death in it, was nothing like so 
unhappy. 

The last epoch of my darling's life is to be defined as 
almost happy in comparison ! It was still loaded with in- 
firmities, bodily weakness, sleeplessness, continual or 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 493 

almost continual pain, and weary misery, so far as body 
was concerned ; but her noble spirit seemed as if it now 
had its wings free, and rose above all that to a really sin- 
gular degree. The battle was over, and we were sore 
wounded ; but the battle was over, and well. It was re- 
marked by everybody that she had never been observed 
so cheerful and bright of mind as in this last period. 
The poor bodily department, I constantly hoped too was 
slowly recovering : and that there would remain to us a 
" sweet farewell " of sunshine after such a day of rains and 
storms, that would still last a blessed while, all my time 
at least, before the end came. And, alas ! it lasted only 
about twenty months, and ended as I have seen. It is 
beautiful still, all that period, the death very beautiful to 
me, and will continue so ; let me not repine, but patiently 
bear what I have got ! While the autumn weather con- 
tinued good she kept improving. I remember mornings 
when I found her quite wonderfully cheerful, as I looked 
in upon her bedroom in passing down, a bright ray of 
mirth in what she would say to me, inexpressibly pathe- 
tic, shining through the wreck of such storms as there 
had been. How could I but hope ? It was an inestima- 
ble mercy to me (as I often remark) that I did at last 
throw aside everything for a few days, and actually get her 
that poor brougham. Never was soul more grateful for 
so small a kindness ; which seemed to illuminate, in some 
sort, all her remaining days for her. It was, indeed, use- 
ful and necessary as a means of health ; but still more 
precious, I doubt not, as a mark of my regard for her. 
Ah me ! she never knew fully, nor could I show her in 



494 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

my heavy-laden miserable life, how much I had at all 
times regarded, loved, and admired her. No telling of 
her now. " Five minutes more of your dear company in 
this world. Oh that I had you yet for but five minutes, 
to tell you all ! " this is often my thought since April 21. 

She was surely very feeble in the Devonshire time 
(March etc., 1865) ; but I remember her as wonderfully 
happy. She had long dialogues with Lady A. ; used to 
talk so prettily with me, when I called, in passing up to 
bed and down from it ; she made no complaint, went 
driving daily through the lanes — sometimes regretted her 
own poor brougham and ** Bellona " (as ** still more one's 
own "), and contrasted her situation as to carriage conve- 
nience with that of far richer ladies. '' They have 30,000/. 
a year, cannot command a decent or comfortable vehicle 
here ; their vehicles all locked up, 400 miles off, in these 
wanderings ; while we — ! " The Lady Ashburton was 
kindness itself to her ; and we all came up to town to- 
gether, rather in improved health she, I not visibly so, 
being now vacant and on the collapse, which is yet hardly 
over, or fairly on the turn. Will it ever be? I have 
sometimes thought this dreadful unexpected stroke might 
perhaps be providential withal upon me ; and that there 
lay some little work to do, under changed conditions, be- 
fore I died. God enable me, if so ; God knows. 

In Nithsdale, last year, it is yet only fourteen months 
ago (ah me !) how beautiful she was ; for three or four 
half or quarter-days together, how unique in their sad 
charm as I now recall them from beyond the grave ! That 
day at Russell's, in the garden etc. at Holmhill ; so poor- 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 495 

\y she, forlorn of outlook one would have said ; (one out- 
look ahead, that of getting me this room trimmed up, the 
darling ever-loving soul !) and yet so lively, sprightly 
even, for my poor sake. ** Sir William Gomm '' (old 
Peninsular and Indian General, who had been reading 
" Friedrich" when she left), what a sparkle that was ! her 
little slap on the table, and arch look, when telling us of 
him and it ! And her own right hand was lame, she had 
only her left to slap with. I cut the meat for her, on her 
plate, that day at dinner, and our drive to the station at 
seven P.M. so sweet, so pure and sad. *' We must re- 
trench, dear ! '' (in my telling her of some foolish Bank 
adventure with the draft I had left her ;) " retrench," oh 
dear, oh dear. Amongst the last things she told me that 
evening was with deep sympathy; "Mr. Thomson" (a 
Virginian who sometimes came) '' called one night ; he 
says there is little doubt they will hang President Davis ! " 
Upon which I almost resolved to write a pamphlet upon 
it, had not I myself been so ignorant about the matter, so 
foreign to the whole abominable fratricidal *'war" (as 
they called it ; *' self-murder of a million brother English- 
men, for the sake of sheer phantasms, and totally false 
theories upon the Nigger," as I had reckoned it). In a 
day or two I found I could not enter upon that thrice ab- 
ject Nigger-delirium (viler to me than old witchcraft, or 
the ravings of John of Munster, considerably viler), and 
that probably I should do poor Davis nothing but harm. 

The second day, at good old Mrs. Ewart's, of Nith- 
bank, is still finer to me. Waiting for me with the car- 
riage ; "Better, dear, fairly better since I shifted to Nith- 



496 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

bank!" the "dinner" ahead there (to my horror), her 
cautious charming preparation of me for it ; our calls 
at Thornhill (new servant ''Jessie," admiring old tailor 
women — no, they were not of the Shankland kind — 
wearisome old women, whom she had such an interest in, 
almost wholly for my sake) ; then our long drive through 
the Drumlanrig woods, with such talk from her (careless 
of the shower that fell battering on our hood and apron ; 
in spite of my habitual dispiritment and helpless gloom 
all that summer, I too was cheered for the time. And 
then the dinner itself, and the busthng rustic company, 
all this, too, was saved by her ; with a quiet little touch 
here and there, she actually turned it into something of 
artistic, and it was pleasant to everybody. I was at two 
or perhaps three dinners after this, along with her in 
London. I partly remarked, what is now clearer to me, 
with what easy perfection she had taken her position in 
these things, that of a person recognized for quietly 
superior if she cared to be s6, and also of a suffering aged 
woman, accepting her age and feebleness with such a 
grace, polite composure and simplicity as — as all of you 
might imitate, impartial bystanders would have said ! 
The minister's assistant, poor young fellow, was gently 
ordered out by her to sing me, " Hame cam' our gudeman 
at e'en," which made him completely happy, and set the 
dull drawing-room all into illumination till tea ended. 
He, the assistant, took me to the station (too late for her 
that evening). 

The third day was at Dumfries ; sister Jean's and the 
railway station : more hampered and obstructed, but still 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 497 

good and beautiful as ever on her part. Dumb Turner, 
at the station etc. ; evening faUing, ruddy opulence of 
sky, how beautiful, how brief and wae ! The fourth time 
was only a ride from Dumfries to Annan, as she went 
home, sad and afflictive to me, seeing such a journey 
ahead for her (and nothing but the new "Jessie" as 
attendant, some carriages off;) I little thought it was to 
be the last bit of railwaying we did together. These, I 
believe, were all our meetings in Scotland of last year. 
One day I stood watching " her train " at the Gill, as ap- 
pointed ; brother Jamie too had been summoned over by 
her desire ; but at Dumfries she felt so weak in the hot 
day, she could only lie down on the sofa, and sadly send 
John in her stead. Brother Jamie, whose rustic equipoise, 
fidelity and sharp vernacular sense, she specially loved, 
was not to behold her at this time or evermore. She was 
waiting for me the night I returned hither; .she had hur- 
ried back from her little visit to Miss Bromley (after the 
*' room " operation) ; must and would be here to receive 
me. She stood there, bright of face and of soul, her 
drawing-room all bright, and everything to the last fibre 
of it in order ; had arrived only two or three hours before ; 
and here again we were. Such welcome, after my vile 
day of railwaying, like Jonah in the whale's belly ! That 
was always her way ; bright home, with its bright face, 
full of love and victorious over all disorder, always shone 
on me like a star as I journeyed and tumbled along amid 
the shriekeries and miseries. Such welcomes could not 
await me for ever ; I little knew this was the last of them 
on earth. My next, for a thousand years I should never 
32 



498 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

forget the next (of April 23, 1866) which now was lying 
only some six months away. I might have seen she was 
very feeble ; but I noticed only how refinedly beautiful 
she was, and thought of no sorrow ahead, — did not even 
think, as I now do, how it was that she was beautifuUer 
than ever ; as if years and sorrows had only " worn " the 
noble texture of her being into greater fineness, the 
colour and tissue still all complete ! That night she said 
nothing of the room here (down below), but next morn- 
ing, after breakfast, led me down, with a quiet smile, 
expecting her little triumph, — and contentedly had it ; 
though I knew not at first the tenth part of her merits in 
regard to that poor enterprise, or how consummately it 
had been done to the bottom in spite of her weakness 
(the noble heart !) ; and I think (remorsefully) I never 
praised her enough for her efforts and successes in regard 
to it. Too late now ! 

My return was about the middle of September ; she 
never travelled more, except among her widish circle of 
friends, of whom she seemed to grow fonder and fonder, 
though generally their qualities were of the affectionate 
and faithfully honest kind, and not of the distinguished, 
as a requisite. She was always very cheerful, and had 
business enough ; though I recollect some mornings, one in 
particular, when the sight of her dear face (haggard from 
the miseries of the past night) was a kind of shock to me. 
Thoughtless mortal : — she raUied always so soon, and 
veiled her miseries away : — I was myself the most col- 
lapsed of men, and had no sunshine in my life but what 
came from her. Our old laundress, Mrs. Cook, a very 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 499 

• 
meritorious and very poor and courageous woman, age 

eighty or more, had fairly fallen useless that autumn, and 
gone into the workhouse. I remember a great deal of 
trouble taken about her, and the search for her, and set- 
tlement of her ; such driving and abstruse enquiry in the 
slums of Westminster, and to the workhouses indicated ; 
discovery of her at length, in the chaos of some Kensing- 
ton Union (a truly cosmic body, herself, this poor old 
cook) ; with instantaneous stir in all directions (consulting 
with Rector Blunt, interviews with Poor-Law Guardians 
etc. etc.), and no rest till the poor old Mrs. Cook was got 
promoted into some quiet cosmic arrangement ; small cell 
or cottage of your own somewhere, with liberty to read, 
to be clean, and to accept a packet of tea, if any friend 
gave you one, etc., etc. A good little triumph to my 
darling ; I think perhaps the best she had that spring or 
winter, and the last till my business and the final one. 

" Frederick" ended in January 1865, and we went to 
Devonshire together, still prospering, she chiefly, though 
she was so weak. And her talk with me and with others 
there ; nobody had such a charming tongue for truth, dis- 
cernment, graceful humour and ingenuity ; ever patient 
too and smiling, over her many pains and sorrows. We 
were peaceable and happy comparatively, through autumn 
and winter ; especially she was wonderfully bearing her 
sleepless nights and thousandfold infirmities, and gently 
picking out of them more bright fragments for herself and 
me than many a one in perfect health and overflowing 
prosperity could have done. She had one or two select 
quality friends among her many others. Lady William 



500 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

Russell Is the only one I will name, who loved her like a 
daughter, and was charmed with her talents and graces. 
" Mr. Carlyle a great man ? Yes ! but Mrs. Carlyle, let 
me inform you, is no less great as a woman ! " Lady Wil- 
liam's pretty little dinners of three were every week or two 
an agreeable and beneficial event to me also, who heard 
the report of them given with such lucidity and charm. 

End of October came somebody about the Edinburgh 
Rectorship, to which she gently advised me. Beginning 
of November I was elected ; and an inane though rather 
amusing hurlyburly of em.pty congratulations, Imaginary 
businesses, etc. etc., began, the end of which has been so 
fatally tragical ! Many were our plans and speculations 
about her going with me ; to lodge at Newbattle ; at etc. 
etc. The heaps of frivolous letters lying every morning 
at breakfast, and which did not entirely cease all winter, 
were a kind of entertainment to her into March, when the 
address and journey had to be thought of as practical and 
close at hand. She decided unwillingly, and with various 
hesitations, not to go with me to Edinburgh, in the in- 
clement weather, not to go even to Fryston (Lord Hough- 
ton's ; Richard Milnes's). As to Edinburgh, she said one 
day, '* You are to speak extempore " (this was more than 
once clearly advised, and with sound insight) ; '*' now if 
anything should happen to you, I find on any sudden 
alarm there is a sharp twinge comes into my back, which 
is like to cut my breath, and seems to stop the heart 
almost, I should take some fit in the crowded house ; it 
will never do, really ! " Alas, the doctors now tell me 
this meant an affection in some ganglion near the spine, 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 501 

and was a most serious thing ; though I did not attach 
importance to it, but only assented to her practical con- 
clusion as perfectly just. She lovingly bantered and 
beautifully encouraged me about my speech, and its hate- 
ful ceremonials and empty botherations ; which, for a 
couple of weeks, were giving me, and her through me, 
considerable trouble, interruption of sleep, etc. ... so 
beautifully borne by her (for my sake), so much less so by 
me for hers. In fact I was very miserable (angry with 
myself for getting into such a coil of vanity, sadly ill in 
health), and her noble example did not teach me as it 
should. Sorrow to me now, when too late ! 

Thursday, March 29, about nine A.M., all was ready 
here ; she softly regulating and forwarding, as her wont 
was. Professor Tyndall, full of good spirits, appeared 
with a cab for King's Cross Station. Fryston Hall to be 
our lodgings till Saturday. I was in the saddest sickly 
mood, full of gloom and misery, but striving to hide it ; 
she too looked very pale and ill, but seemed intent only 
on forgetting nothing that could further me. A little 
flask, holding perhaps two glasses of fine brandy, she 
brought me as a thought of her own ; I did keep a little 
drop of that brandy (hers, such was a superstition I had), 
and mixed it in a tumbler of water in that wild scene of 
the address, and afterwards told her I had done so ; thank 
Heaven that I remembered that in one of my hurried 
notes. The last I saw of her was as she stood with her 
back to the parlour door to bid me her good-bye. She 
kissed me twice (she me once, 1 her a second time) ; and — 
oh blind mortals ! my one w^ish and hope was to get back 



502 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

to her again, and be in peace under her bright welcome, 
for the rest of my days, as it were ! 

Tyndall was kind, cheery, inventive, helpful ; the loy- 
alest son could not have more faithfully striven to sup- 
port his father under every difficulty that rose ; and they 
were many. At Fryston no sleep was to be had for rail- 
ways etc., and the terror lay in those nights that speaking 
would be impossible, that I should utterly break down ; 
to which, indeed, I had in my mind said, " Well then," 
and was preparing to treat it with the best contempt I 
could. Tyndall wrote daily to her, and kept up better 
hopes ; by a long gallop with me the second day he did 
get me one good six hours of sleep ; and to her, made 
doubtless the most of it : I knew dismally what her anxie- 
ties would be, but trust well he reduced them to their 
minimum. Lord Houghton's, and Lady's, kindness to 
me was unbounded ; she also was to have been there, but 
I was thankful not. Saturday (to York etc. with Hough- 
ton, thence after long evil loiterings to Edinburgh with 
Tyndall and Huxley) was the acme of the three road 
days ; my own comfort was that there could be no post to 
her ; and I arrived in Edinburgh the forlornest of all 
physical wretches ; and had it not been for the kindness 
of the good Erskines, and of their people too, I should 
have had no sleep there either, and have gone probably 
from bad to worse. But Tyndall's letter of Sunday would 
be comforting ; and my poor little darling would still be 
in hope that Monday morning, though of course in the 
painfullest anxiety, and I know she had quite " gone off 
her sleep " in those five days since I had left. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 503 

Monday, at Edinburgh, was to me the gloomiest 
chaotic day, nearly intolerable for confusion, crowding, 
noisy inanity and misery, till once I got done. IMy 
speech was delivered as in a mood of defiant despair, and 
under the pressure of nightmares. Some feeling that I 
was not speaking lies alone sustained me. The applause 
etc. I took for empty noise, which it really was not alto- 
gether. The instant I found myself loose, I hurried joy- 
fully out of it over to my brother's lodging (73 George 
Street, near by) ; to the students all crowding and shout- 
ing round me, I waved my hand prohibitively at the door, 
perhaps lifted my hat : and they gave but one cheer 
more ; something in the tone of it which did for the first 
tim.e go into my heart. *' Poor young men ! so well 
affected to the poor old brother or grandfather ; and in 
such a black whirlpool of a world here all of us ! " Brother 
Jamie, and son, etc., were sitting within. Erskine and I 
went silently walking through the streets ; and at night 
was a kind, but wearing and wearying congratulatory din- 
ner, followed by other such, unwholesome to me, not joy- 
ful to me ; and endured as duties, little more. But that 
same afternoon, Tyndall's telegram, emphatic to the utter- 
most (" A perfect triumph " the three words of it) arrived 
here ; a joy of joys to my own little heroine, so beautiful 
her description of it to me, which was its one value to 
me ; nearly naught otherwise (in very truth) and the last 
of such that could henceforth have any such addition 
made to it. Alas, all "additions" are now ended, and 
the thing added to has become only a pain. But I do 
thank heaven for this last favour to her that so loved me ; 



504 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

and it will remain a joy to me, if my last in this world. 
She had to dine with Forster and Dickens that evening, 
and their way of receiving her good news charmed her as 
much almost as the news itself. 

From that day forward her little heart appears to have 
been fuller and fuller of joy ; newspapers, etc. etc. making 
such a jubilation (foolish people, as if the address were 
anything, or had contained the least thing in it which had 
not been told you already !) She went out for two days 
to Mrs. Oliphant at Windsor ; recovered her sleep to the 
old poor average, or nearly so ; and by every testimony 
and all the evidence I myself have, was not for many 
years, if ever, seen in such fine spirits and so hopeful and 
joyfully serene and victorious frame of mind, till the last 
moment. Noble little heart ! her painful, much enduring, 
much endeavouring little history, now at last crowned with 
plain victory, in sight of her own people, and of all the 
world ; everybody now obliged to say my Jeannie was 
not wrong ; she was right and has made it good ! Surely 
for this I should be grateful to heaven, for this amidst the 
immeasurable wreck that was preparing for us. She had 
from an early period formed her own little opinion about 
me (what an Eldorado to me, ungrateful being, blind, un- 
grateful, condemnable, and heavy laden, and crushed down 
into blindness by great misery as I oftenest was !), and she 
never flinched from it an instant, I think, or cared, or 
counted, what the world said to the contrary (very brave, 
magnanimous, and noble, truly she was in all this) ;.but to 
have the world confirm her in it was always a sensible plea- 
sure, which she took no pains to hide, especially from me. 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 505 

She lived nineteen days after that Edinburgh Mon- 
day ; on the nineteenth (April 21, 1866, between three 
and four P.M., as near as I can gather and sift), suddenly, 
as by a thunderbolt from skies all blue she was snatched 
from me ; a '' death from the gods," the old Romans 
would have called it ; the kind of death she many a time 
expressed her wish for ; and in all my life (and as I feel 
ever since) there fell on me no misfortune like it ; which 
has smitten my whole world into universal wreck (unless 
I can repair it in some small measure), and extinguish 
whatever light of cheerfulness and loving hopefulness life 
still had in it to me. 

[Here follows a letter from ^liss Jewsbury, with part 
of a second, which tell their own tale, and after them ^Ir. 
Carlyle's closing words.] 

43 Markham Square, Chelsea. 
May 26, 1866. 

Dear Mr. Carlyle, — I think it better to write than 
to speak on the miserable subject about which you told me 
to enquire of Mr. Sylvester.' I saw him to-day. He said 
that it would be about twenty minutes after three o'clock 
or thereabouts when they left ^Ir. Forster s house ; that he 
then drove through the Queen's gate, close by the Ken- 
sington Gardens, that there, at the uppermost gate, she 
got out, and walked along the side of the Gardens very 
slowly, about two hundred paces, with the little dog run- 
ning, until she came to the Serpentine Bridge, at the 
' Mrs, Carlyle's coachman. 



S06 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

southern end of which she got into the carriage again, and 
he drove on until they came to a quiet place on the Ty- 
burnia side, near Victoria Gate, and then she put out the 
dog to run along. When they came opposite to Albion 
Street, Stanhope Place (lowest thoroughfare of Park to- 
wards Marble Arch), a brougham coming along upset the 
dog, which lay on its back screaming for a while, and then 
she pulled the check-string ; and he turned round and 
pulled up at the side of the footpath, and there the dog 
was (he had got up out of the road and gone there) : 
almost before the carriage stopped she was out of it. 
The lady whose brougham had caused the accident got 
out also, and several other ladies who were walking had 
stopped round the dog. The lady spoke to her ; but he 
could not hear what she said, and the other ladies spoke. 
She then lifted the dog into the carriage, and got in her- 
self. He asked if the little dog were hurt ; but, he thinks, 
she did not hear him, as carriages were passing. He 
heard the wretched vermin of a dog squeak as if she had 
been feeling it (nothing but a toe was hurt) ; this was the 
last sound or sigh he ever heard from her place of fate. 
He went on towards Hyde Park Corner, turned there and 
drove past the Duke of Wellington's Achilles figure, up 
the drive to the Serpentine and past it, and came round 
by the road where the dog was hurt, past the Duke 
of Wellington's [house] and past the gate opposite St. 
George's ; getting no sign (noticing only the two hands 
laid on the lap, palm uppermost the right hand, reverse 
way the left, and all motionless), he turned into the Ser- 
pentine drive again ; but after a few yards, feeling a little 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 50/ 

surprised, he looked back, and seeing her in the same 
posture, became alarmed, made for the streetward en- 
trance into the Park (few yards westward of gatekeeper's 
lodge), and asked a lady to look in ; and she said what 
we know, and she addressed a gentleman who confirmed 
her fears. It was then fully a quarter past four ; going 
on to twenty minutes (but nearer the quarter), of this he 
is quite certain. She was leaning back in one corner of 
the carriage, rugs spread over her knees ; her eyes were 
closed, and her upper lip slightly, slightly opened. 
Those who saw her at the hospital, and when in the car- 
riage, speak of the beautiful expression upon her face. 

I asked him how it was that so long a time was put 
over in so short a drive ? He said he went very slowly 
on account of the distractions, etc., and he did not seem 
to think the time taken up at all remarkable (fifty-five 
minutes) : nor did he tell me if he noticed the time as he 
passed the Marble Arch clock either of the two times. 

If there be any other question you wish asked of him, 
if you will tell me, I will ask him. He said he heard the 
little dog cry out as though she were feeling to find if it 
were hurt. 

Very respectfully and afifectionately, 

Geraldine E. Jewsbury. 



On that miserable night, when we were preparing to 
receive her, Mrs. Warren ' came to me and said, that one 
time when she was very ill, she said to her, that when the 
last had come, she was to go upstairs into the closet of 

' The housekeeper in Cheyne Row. 



5g8 jane welsh carlyle. 

the spare room and there she would find two wax can- 
dles wrapt in paper, and that those were to be lighted, 
and burned. She said that after she came to liv^e in Lon- 
don, she wanted to give a party. Her mother wished 
everything to be very nice, and went out and bought 
candles and confectionary : and set out a table, and 
lighted up the room quite splendidly, and called her to 
come and see it, when all was prepared. She was angry ; 
she said people would say she was extravagant, and would 
ruin her husband. She took away two of the candles 
and some of the cakes. Her mother was hurt and began 
to weep [I remember the ''soiree" well; heard nothing 
of this ! — T. C.]. She was pained at once at what she 
had done ; she tried to comfort her, and Avas dreadfully 
sorry. She took the candles and wrapped them up, and 
put them where they could be easily found. We found 
them and lighted them, and did as she had desired. 

G. E. J. 

What a strange, beautiful sublime and almost ter- 
rible little action ; silently resolved on, and kept silent 
from all the earth, for perhaps twenty- four years ! I 
never heard a whisper of it, and yet see it to be true. 
The visit must have been about 1837 ; I remember the 
** soiree " right well ; the resolution, bright as with heav- 
enly tears and lightning, was probably formed on her 
mother's death, February 1842. My radiant one ! Must 
question Warren the first time I have heart (May 29, 
1866). 

I have had from Mrs. Warren a clear narrative (short- 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 509 

ly' after the above date). Geraldine's report is perfectly 
true ; fact with Mrs. Warren occurred in February or 
March 1866, "perhaps a month before you went to 
Edinburgh, sir." I was in the house, it seems, probably 
asleep upstairs, or gone out for my walk, evening about 
eight o'clock. My poor darling was taken with some bad 
fit (" nausea," and stomach misery perhaps), and had 
rung for Mrs. Warren, by whom, with some sip of warm 
liquid, and gentle words, she was soon gradually relieved. 
Being very grateful and still very miserable and low, she 
addressed Mrs. Warren as above, "When the last has 
come, Mrs. Warren ; " and gave her, with brevity, a 
statement of the case, and exacted her promise ; which 
the other, with cheering counter-words (" Oh, madam, 
what is all this ! you will see me die first ! ") hypothet- 
ically gave. All this was wiped clean away before I got 
in ; I seem to myself to half recollect one evening, when 
she did complain of "nausea so habitual now," and 
looked extremely miserable, while I sat at tea (pour it 
out she always would herself drinking only hot water, oh 
heavens !) The candles burnt for two whole nights, says 
Mrs. W. (July 24, 1866). 

The paper of this poor notebook of hers is done ; all 
I have to say, too (though there lie such volumes yet un- 
said), seems to be almost done, and I must sorrowfully 
end it, and seek for something else. Very sorrowfully 
still, for it has been my sacred shrine and religious city 
of refuge from the bitterness of these sorrows during all 
the doleful weeks that are past since I took it up ; a kind 
of devotional thing (as I once already said), which softens 



510 JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

all grief into tenderness and infinite pity and repentant 
love, one's whole sad life drowned as if in tears for one, 
and all the wrath and scorn and other grim elements si- 
lently melted away. And now, am I to leave it ; to take 
farewell of her a second time ? Right silent and serene 
is she, my lost darling yonder, as I often think in my 
gloom, no sorrow more for her, nor will there long be 
for me. 



APPENDIX, 



REMINISCENCES OF SUNDRY. 

[Begun at Mentone (Alpes Maritimes), Monday, January 
28, 1867.] 

Many literary and one or two political and otherwise public per- 
sons, more or less superior to the common run of men I have met 
with in my life ; but perhaps none of them really great or worth 
more than a transient remembrance, loud as the talk about them 
once may have been ; and certainly none of them, what is more to the 
purpose, ever vitally interesting or consummately admirable to my- 
self; so that if I do, for want of something else to occupy me better, 
mark down something of what I recollect concerning some of them, 
who seemed the greatest, or stood the nearest to me, it surely ought 
to be with extreme brevity, with rapid succinctness (if I can) : at all 
events with austere candour, and avoidance of anything which I can 
suspect to be untrue. Perhaps nobody but myself will ever read 
this, — but that is not infallibly certain — and even in regard to my- 
self, the one possible profit of such a thing is, that it be not false or 
incorrect in any point, but correspond to the fact in all. 

When it was that I first got acquainted with Southey's books, I 
do not now recollect, except that it must have been several years 
after he had been familiar to me as a name, and many years after 
the public had been familiar with him as a poet, and poetically and 
otherwise didactic writer. His laureateship provoked a great deal of 
vulgar jesting; about the ''butt of sack," etc. ; for the newspaper 
public, by far the greater number of them radically given had him 
considerably in abhorrence, and called him not only Tory, but ''re- 
negade," who had traitorously deserted, and gone over to the bad 
cause. It was at Kirkcaldy that we all read a " slashing article " 
33 



514 APPENDIX. 

(by Brougham I should now guess, were it of the least moment) on 
Southey's " Letters to W. Smith, M.P." of Norwich, a Small Socin- 
ian personage, conscious of meaning grandly and well, who had 
been denouncing him as "renegade" (probably contrasting the once 
*' Wat Tyler" with the now laureateship) in the House of Commons; 
a second back stroke, which, in the irritating circumstances of the 
" Wat" itself (republished by some sneaking bookseller) had driven 
Southey to his fighting gear or polemical pen. The pamphlet itself 
we did not see, except in review quotations, which were naturally 
the shrillest and weakest discoverable, with citations from ''Wat 
Tyler " to accompany ; but the flash reviewer understood his trade ; 
and I can remember how we all cackled and triumphed over Southey 
along with him, as over a slashed and well slain foe to us and man- 
kind ; for we were all Radicals in heart, Irving and I as much as 
any of the others, and were not very wise, nor had looked into the 
per contra side. I retract now on many points, on that of " Barab- 
bas" in particular,, which example Southey cited as characteristic of 
democracy, greatly to my dissent, till I had much better, and for 
many years, considered the subject. 

That bout of pamphleteering had brought Southey much nearer 
me, but had sensibly diminished my esteem of him, and would nat- 
urally slacken my desire for farther acquaintance. It must have 
been a year or two later when his " Thalaba," " Curse of Kehama," 
''Joan of Arc," etc. came into my hands, or some one of them came, 
which awakened new effort for the others. I recollect the much 
kindlier and more respectful feeling these awoke in me, which has 
continued ever since. I much recognise the piety, the gentle deep 
affection, the reverence for God and man, which reigned in these 
pieces: full of soft pity, like the wailings of a mother, and yet with 
a clang of chivalrous valour finely audible too. One could not help 
loving such a man ; and yet I rather felt too as if he were a shrillish 
thin kind of man, the feminine element perhaps considerably pre- 
dominating and limiting. However, I always afterwards looked out 
for his books, new or old, as for a thing of value, and in particular 



APPINDIX. 515 

read his articles in the '' Quarterly," which were the most accessible 
productions. In spite of my Radicalism, I found very much in these 
Toryisms which was greatly according to my heart ; things rare and 
worthy, at once pious and true, which were always welcome to me, 
though I strove to base them on a better ground than his, — his being 
no eternal or time-defying one, as I could see ; and time in fact, m 
my own case, having already done its work then. In this manner 
our innocently pleasant relation, as writer and written for, had gone 
on, without serious shock, though, after " Kehama," not with much 
growth in quality or quantity, for perhaps ten years. 

It was probably in 1836 or 7, the second or third year after our 
removal to London, that Henry Taylor, author of " Artevelde " and 
various similar things, with whom I had made acquaintance, and 
whose early regard, constant esteem, and readiness to be helpful 
and friendly, should be among my memorabilia of those years, in- 
vited me to come to him one evening, and have a little speech with 
Southey, whom he judged me to be curious about, and to like, 
perhaps more than I did. Taylor himself, a solid, sound-headed, 
faithful man, though of morbid vivacity in all senses of that deep- 
reaching word, and with a fine readiness to apprehend new truth, 
and stand by it, was in personal intimacy with the " Lake" sages 
and poets, especially with Southey ; he considered that in Words- 
worth and the rest of them was embodied all of pious wisdom that 
our age had, and could not doubt but the sight of Southey would be 
welcome to me. I readily consented to come, none but we three 
present, Southey to be Taylor's guest at dinner, I to join them after 
— which was done. Taylor, still little turned of thirty, lived miscel- 
laneously about, in bachelor's lodgings, or sometimes for a month 
or two during "the season" in furnished houses, where he could 
receive guests. In the former I never saw him, nor to the latter did 
I go but when invited. It was in a quiet ground-floor, of the latter 
character as I conjectured, somewhere near Downing Street, and 
looking into St. James's Park, that I found Taylor and Southey, with 
their wine before them, which they hardly seemed to be minding ; 



5l6 APPENDIX. 

very quiet this seemed to be, quiet their discourse too ; to all which, 
not sorry at the omen, I quietly joined myself. Southey was a man 
towards well up in the fifties ; hair grey, not yet hoary, well setting 
off his fine clear brown complexion ; head and face both smallish, 
as indeed the figure was while seated ; features finely cut ; eyes, 
brow, mouth, good in their kind — expressive all, and even vehemently 
so, but betokening rather keenness than depth either of intellect or 
character ; a serious, human, honest, but sharp almost fierce-looking 
thin man, with very much of the militant in his aspect, — in the eyes 
especially was visible a mixture of sorrow and of anger, or of angry 
contempt, as if his indignant fight with the world had not yet ended 
in victory, but also never should in defeat. A man you were willing 
to hear speak. We got to talk of Parliament, public speaking and 
the like (perhaps some electioneering then afoot ?) On my men- 
tioning the candidate at Bristol, with his " I say ditto to Mr. Burke " 
—" Hah, I myself heard that" (had been a boy listening when that 
was said !) His contempt for the existing set of parties was great 
and fixed, especially for what produced the present electoral temper ; 
though in the future too, except through Parliaments and elections, 
he seemed to see no hope. He took to repeating in a low, sorrow- 
fully mocking tone, certain verses (I supposed of his own), emphati- 
cally in that vein which seemed to me bitter and exaggerative, not 
without ingenuity, but exhibiting no trace of genius. Partly in 
response, or rather as sole articulate response, I asked who had 
made those verses ? Southey answered carelessly, '' Praed, they 
say ; Praed, I suppose." My notion was, he was merely putting me 
off, and the verses were his own, though he disliked confessing to 
them. A year or two ago, looking into some review of a reprint of 
Praed's works, I came upon the verses again, among other excerpts 
of a similar genus, and found that they verily were Praed's ; my 
wonder now was that Southey had charged his memory with the like 
of them. This Praed was a young M.P. who had gained distinction 
at Oxford or Cambridge. As he spoke and wrote without scruple 
against the late illustrious Reform Bill and sovereign Reform doc- 



APPENDIX. 517 

trine in general, great things were expected of him by his party, 
now sitting cowed into silence, and his name was very current in 
the newspapers for a few months ; till suddenly (soon after this of 
Southey), the poor young man died, and sank at once into oblivion, 
tragical though not unmerited, nor extraordinary, as I judged from 
the contents of that late reprint and Biographical Sketch, by some 
pious and regretful old friend of his. That Southey had some of 
I'raed's verses by heart (verses about Hon. Mr. this moving, say, to 
abolish death and the devil ; Hon. Mr. B., to change, for improve- 
ment's sake, the obliquity of the Ecliptic, etc. etc.) is perhaps a kind 
of honour to poor Praed, who, (inexorable fate cutting short his 
*' career of ambition " in that manner,) is perhaps as sad and tragi- 
cal to me as to another. After Southey's bit of recitation I think 
the party must have soon broken up. I recollect nothing more of 
it, except my astonishment when Southey at last completely rose 
from his chair to shake hands ; he had only half risen and nodded 
on my coming in ; and all along I had counted him a lean little man; 
but now he shot suddenly aloft into a lean tall one, all legs, in shape 
and stature like a pair of tongs, which peculiarity my surprise doubt- 
less exaggerated to me, but only made it the more notable and en- 
tertaining. Nothing had happened throughout that was other than 
moderately pleasant ; and I returned home (I conclude) well enough 
satisfied with my evening. Southey's sensitiveness I had noticed on 
the first occasion as one of his characteristic qualities ; but was 
nothing like aware of the extent of it till our next meeting. 

This was a few evenings afterwards, Taylor giving some dinner, 
or party, party in honour of his guest ; if dinner I was not at that, 
but must have undertaken for the evening sequel, as less incommo- 
dious to me, less unwholesome more especially. I remember enter- 
ing, in the same house, but upstairs this time, a pleasant little 
drawing-room, in which, in well-lighted, secure enough condition, 
sat Southey in full dress, silently reclining, and as yet no other com- 
pany. We saluted suitably ; touched ditto on the vague initiatory 
points ; and were still there, when by way of coming closer, I asked 



5l8 appendix. 

mildly, with no appearance of special interest, but with more than 
1 really felt, " Do you know De Ouincy ? " (the opium-eater, whom 
I knew to have lived in Cumberland as his neighbour). "Yes, 
sir," said Southey, with extraordinary animosity, '^and if you have 
opportunity, I'll thank you to tell him he is one of the greatest scoun- 
drel's living ! " I laughed lightly, said I had myself little acquaint- 
ance with the man, and could not wish to recommend myself by 
that message. Southey's face, as I looked at it, was become of 
slate colour, the eyes glancing, the attitude rigid, the figure alto- 
gether a picture of Rhadamanthine rage, — that is, rage conscious to 
itself of being just. He doubtless felt I would expect some explan- 
ation from him. " I have told Hartley Coleridge," said he, ''that 
he ought to take a strong cudgel, proceed straight to Edinburgh, 
and give De Ouincy, publicly in the streets there, a sound beating— 
as a calumniator, cowardly spy, traitor, base betrayer of the hos- 
pitable social hearth, for one thing ! " It appeared De Quincy 
was then, and for some time past, writing in ^' Blackwood's Maga- 
zine" something of autobiographic nature, a series of papers on the 
*'Lake" period of his life, merely for the sake of the highly needful 
trifle of money, poor soul, and with no wish to be untrue (I could 
believe) or hurt anybody, though not without his own bits of splen- 
etic conviction, and to which latter, in regard of Coleridge in 
particular, he had given more rein than was agreeable to parties 
concerned. I believe I had myself read the paper on Coleridge, 
one paper on him I certainly read, and had been the reverse of 
tempted by it to look after the others ; finding in this, e.g., that 
Coleridge had the greatest intellect perhaps ever given to man, " but 
that he wanted, or as good as wanted, common honesty in applying 
it;" which seemed to me a miserable contradiction in terms, and 
threw light, if not on Coleridge, yet on De Quincy's faculty of judg- 
ing him or others. In this paper there were probably withal some 
domestic details or allusions, to which, as familiar to rumour, I had 
paid but little heed ; but certainly, of general reverence for Cole- 
ridge and his gifts and deeds, I had traced, not deficiency in this 



APPENDIX. 519 

paper, but glaring exaggeration, coupled with De Quincean draw- 
backs, which latter had alone struck Southey with such poignancy ; 
or perhaps there had been other more criminal papers, which Southey 
knew of, and not 1 ? In few minutes we let the topic drop, I help- 
ing what I could, and he seemed to feel as if he had done a little 
wrong ; and was bound to show himself more than usually amicable 
and social, especially with me, for the rest of the evening, which he 
did in effect ; though I quite forget the details, only that I had a 
good deal of talk with him, in the circle of the others ; and had again 
more than once to notice the singular readiness of the blushes ; 
amiable red blush, beautiful like a young girl's, when you touched 
genially the pleasant theme ; and serpent-like flash of blue or black 
blush (this far, very far the rarer kind, though it did recur too) when 
you struck upon the opposite. All details of the evening, except 
that primary one, are clean gone ; but the effect was interesting, 
pleasantly stimulating and surprising. I said to myself, '' How has 
this man contrived, with such a nervous system, to keep alive for near 
sixty years ? Now blushing under his grey hairs, rosy like a maiden 
of fifteen; now slaty almost, like a rattle-snake or fiery serpent? 
How has he not been torn to pieces long since, under such furious 
puUing this way and that ? He must have somewhere a great deal 
of methodic virtue in him ; I suppose, too, his heart is thoroughly 
honest, which helps considerably ! " I did not fancy myself to have 
made personally much impression on Southey ; but on those terms 
I accepted him for a loyal kind of man ; and was content and thank- 
ful to know of his existing in the world, near me, or still far from 
me, as the fates should have determined. For perhaps two years I 
saw no more of him ; heard only from Taylor in particular, that he 
was overwhelmed in misery, and imprudently refusing to yield, or 
screen himself in any particular. Imprudently, thought Taylor and 
his other friends ; for not only had he been, for several continuous 
years, toiling and fagging at a collective edition of his works, which 
cost him a great deal of incessant labour ; but far worse, his poor 
wife had sunk into insanity, and moreover he would not, such his 



520 APPENDIX. 

feeling on this tragic matter, be persuaded to send her to an asylum, 
or trust her out of his own sight and keeping! Figure such a scene ; 
and what the most sensitive of mankind must have felt under it. 
This, then, is the garland and crowii of '^ victory" provided for an 
old man, when he survives, spent with his fifty years of climbing 
and of running, and has w^hat you call won the race ! 

It was after I had finished the ''French Revolution," and per- 
haps after my Annandale journey to recover from this adventure, 
that I heard of Southey's being in town again. His collective edi- 
tion was complete, his poor wife was dead and at rest ; his work was 
done, in fact (had he known it), all his work in the world was done ; 
and he had determined on a few weeks of wandering, and trying to 
repose and recreate himself, among old friends and scenes. I saw 
him twice or thrice on this occasion ; it was our second and last 
piece of intercourse, and much the more interesting, to me at least, 
and for a reason that will appear. My wild excitation of nerves, 
after finishing that grim book on '' French Revolution," was some- 
thing strange. The desperate nature of our circumstances and out- 
looks vv'hile writing it, the thorough possession it had taken of me, 
dwelling in me day and night, keeping me in constant fellowship 
with such a " flamy cut-throat scene of things," infernal and celes- 
tial both in one, with no fixed prospect but that of writing it, though 
I should die, had held me in a fever blaze for three years long ; and 
now the blaze had ceased, problem taliter qualiter was actually done, 
and my humour and way of thought about all things was of an alto- 
gether ghastly, dim-smouldering, and as if preternatural sort. I 
well remember that ten minutes' survey I had of Annan and its vi- 
cinity, the forenoon after my landing there. Brother Alick must 
l.-ive met me at the steamboat harbour, I suppose ; at any rate we 
were walking towards Scotsbrig together, and at Mount Annan Gate, 
bottom of Landhead hamlet, he had left me for a moment till he 
called somewhere. I stood leaning against a stone or milestone, 
face towards Annan, of which with the two miles of variegated cheer- 
ful green slope that intervened, and then of the Solway Frith, far 



APPENDIX. 521 

and wide from Gretna, St. Bees Head and beyond it, of the grand 
and lovely Cumberland mountains, with Helvellyn and even with 
Ingleborough in the rearward, there was a magnificent view well 
known to me. Stone itself was well known to me ; this had been 
my road to Annan School from my tenth year upward ; right sharp 
was my knowledge of every item in this scene, thousandfold my 
memories connected with it, and mournful and painful rather than 
joyful, too many of them ! And now here it was again ; and here 
was I again. Words cannot utter the wild and ghastly. expressive- 
ness of that scene to me ; it seemed as if Hades itself and the gloomy 
realms of death and eternity were looking out on me through those 
poor old familiar objects ; as if no miracle could be more miracu- 
lous than this same bit of space and bit of time spread out before 
me. I felt withal how wretchedly unwell I must be ; and was glad, 
no doubt, when Alick returned, and we took the road again. What 
precedes and what follows this clear bit of memory, are alike gone ; 
but for seven or more weeks after, I rode often down and up this 
same road, silent, solitary, weird of mood, to bathe in the Solway ; 
and not even my dear old mother's love and cheery helpfulness (for 
she was then still strong for her age) could raise my spirits out of 
utter grimness and fixed contemptuous disbelief in the future. Hope 
of having succeeded, of ever succeeding, I had not the faintest, was 
not even at the pains to wish it ; said only in a dim mute way, 
** Very well, then ; be it just so then ! " A foolish young neighbour, 
not an ill-disposed, sent me a number of the " Athenaeum" (literary 
journal of the day) in which I was placidly, with some elaboration, 
set down as blockhead and strenuous failure : the last words were, 
*' Readers, have we made out our case ? " I read it without pain, 
or pain the least to signify ; laid it aside for a day or two ; then one 
morning, in some strait about our breakfast tea-kcttlc, slipt the pec- 
cant number under that, and had my cup of excellent hot tea from 
it. The foolish neighbour who was filing the "Athenaeum" (more 
power to him !) found a lacuna in his set at this point ; might know 
better, another time, it was hoped ! Thackeray's laudation in the 



522 APPENDIX. 

'' Times," I also recollect the arrival of (how pathetic now her mirth 
over it to me !) But neither did Thackeray inspire me with any 
emotion, still less with any ray of exultation : " One other poor 
judge voting," I said to myself; ^' but what is he, or such as he ? 
The fate of that thing is fixed ! I .have written it ; that is all my re- 
sult." Nothing now strikes me as affecting in all this but her noble 
attempt to cheer me on my return home to her, still sick and sad ; 
and how she poured out on me her melodious joy, and all her bits 
of confirmatory anecdotes and narratives ; " Oh, it has had a great 
success, dear!" and not even she could irradiate my darkness, 
beautifully as she tried for a long time, as I sat at her feet again by 
our own parlour-fire. '' Oh, you are an unbelieving nature ! " said 
she at last, starting up, probably to give me some tea. There was, 
and is, in all this something heavenly ; the rest is all of it smoke ; 
and has gone up the chimney, inferior in benefit and quality to what 
my pipe yielded me. I was rich once, had I known it, very rich ; 
and now I am become poor to the end. 

Such being my posture and humour at that time, fancy my sur- 
prise at finding Southey full of sympathy, assent and recognition of 
the amplest kind, for my poor new book ! We talked largely on the 
huge event itself, which he had dwelt with openly or privately ever 
since his youth, and tended to interpret, exactly as I, the suicidal 
explosion of an old wicked world, too wicked, false and impious for 
living longer ; and seemed satisfied and as if grateful, that a strong 
voice had at last expressed that meaning. My poor " French Revo- 
lution " evidently appeared to him a good deed, a salutary bit of 
" scriptural " exposition for the public and for mankind ; and this, I 
could perceive, was the soul of a great many minor approbations 
and admirations of detail, which he was too polite to speak of. As 
Southey was the only man of eminence that had ever taken such a 
view of me, and especially of this my first considerable book, it 
seems strange that I should have felt so little real triumph in it as I 
did. For all other eminent men, in regard to all my books and 
writings hitherto, and most of all in regard to this latest, had stood 



APPENDIX. 523 

pointedly silent, dubitative, disapprobatory, many of them shaking 
their heads. Then, when poor " Sartor" got passed through " Fra- 
ser," and was done up from the Fraser types as a separate thing, 
perhaps about fifty copies being struck off, I sent six copies to six 
Edinburgh Uterary friends ; from not one of whom did I get the 
smallest whisper even of receipt — a thing disappointing more or less 
to human nature, and which has silently and insensibly led me never 
since to send any copy of a book to Edinburgh, or indeed to Scot- 
land at all, except to my own kindred there, and in one or two spe- 
cific unliterary cases more. The Plebs of literature might be divided 
in their verdicts about me, though, by count of heads, I always sus- 
pect the " guilties " clean had it ; but the conscript fathers declined 
to vote at all. And yet here was a conscript father voting in a very 
pregnant manner ; and it seems I felt but little joy even in that ! 
Truly I can say for myself, Southey's approbation, though very pri- 
vately I doubtless had my pride in it, did not the least tend to swell 
me ; though, on the other hand, I must own to very great gloom of 
mind, sullen some part of it, which is possibly a worse fault than 
what it saved me from. I remember now how polite and delicate his 
praises of me were ; never given direct or in over measure, but al- 
ways obliquely, in the way of hint or inference left for me ; and how 
kind, sincere and courteous, his manner throughout was. Our mu- 
tual considerations about French Revolution, about its incidents, 
catastrophes, or about its characters, Danton, Camille, etc., and 
contrasts and comparisons of them with their (probable) English 
compeers of the day, yielded pleasant and copious material for dia- 
logue when we met. Literature was hardly touched upon : our dis- 
course came almost always upon moral and social topics. Southey's 
look, I remarked, was strangely careworn, anxious, though he seemed 
^to like talking, and both talked and listened well ; his eyes especially 
were as if filled with gloomy bewilderment and incurable sorrows. 
He had got to be about sixty-three, had buried all his suffering 
loved ones, wound up forty years of incessant vehement labour, 
much of it more or less ungenial to him ; and in fact, though he 



524 APPENDIX. 

knew it not, had finished his work in the world ; and might well be 
looking back on it with a kind of ghastly astonishment rather than 
with triumph or joy ! 

I forget how often we met ; it was not very often ; it was always 
at H. Taylor's, or through Taylor. One day, for the first and last 
time, he made us a visit at Chelsea ; a certain old lady cousin of 
Taylor's, who sometimes presided in his house for a month or two in 
the town season, — a Miss Fenwick, of provincial accent and type, 
but very wise, discreet and well-bred, — had come driving down 
with him. Their arrival, and loud thundering knock at the door, is 
very memorable to me ; — the moment being unusually critical in 
our poor household ! My little Jeannie was in hands with the mar- 
malade that day : none ever made such marmalade for me, pure as 
liquid amber, in taste and in look almost poetically delicate, and it 
was the only one of her pretty and industrious confitures that I indi- 
vidually cared for ; which made her doubly diligent and punctual 
about it. (Ah me, ah me !) The kitchen fire, I suppose, had not been 
brisk enough, free enough, so she had had the large brass pan and 
contents brought up to the brisker parlour fire ; and was there vic- 
toriously boiling it, when it boiled over, in huge blaze, set the chimney 
on fire, — and I (from my writing upstairs I suppose) had been sud- 
denly summoned to the rescue. What a moment ! what an outlook ! 
The kindling of the chimney soot was itself a grave matter ; involv- 
ing fine of ^lo if the fire-engines had to come. My first and imme- 
diate step was to parry this ; by at once letting down the grate 
valve, and cutting quite off the supply of oxygen or atmosphere ; 
which of course was effectual, though at the expense of a little 
smoke in the room meanwhile. The brass pan, and remaining con- 
tents (not much wasted or injured) she had herself snatched off and 
set on the hearth ; I was pulling down the back windows, which 
would have completed the temporary settlement, when, hardly three 
yards from us, broke out the thundering door-knocker : and before 
the brass pan could be got away, Miss Fenwick and Southey were 
let in. Southey, I don't think my darling had yet seen ; but her own 



APPENDIX. 525 

fine modest composure, and presence of mind, never in any greatest 
other presence forsook her, I remember how daintily she made the 
salutations, brief quizzical bit of explanation, got the wreck to 
vanish ; and sate down as member of our little party. Southey 
and I were on the sofa together ; she nearer Miss Fenwick, for a 
little of feminine *' aside " now and then. The colloquy did not last 
long : — I recollect no point of it, except that Southey and I got to 
speaking about Shelley (whom perhaps I remembered to have lived 
in the Lake country for some time, and had started on Shelley as a 
practicable topic). Southey did not rise into admiration of Shelley 
either for talent or conduct ; spoke of him and his life without bit- 
terness, but with contemptuous sorrow, and evident aversion min- 
gled with his pity. To me also poor Shelley always was, and is, a 
kind of ghastly object, colourless, pallid, without health or warmth 
or vigour ; the sound of him shrieky, frosty, as if a ghost were try- 
ing to '' sing to us ;" the temperament of him spasmodic, hysterical 
instead of strong or robust ; with fine affections and aspirations, gone 
all such a road : — a man infinitely too weak for that solitary scaling 
of the Alps which he undertook in spite of all the world. At some 
point of the dialogue I said to Southey, " a haggard existence that 
of his." I remember Southey's pause, and the tone and air with 
which he answered, *' It is a haggard existence ! " His look, at this 
moment, was unusually gloomy and heavy-laden, full of confused 
distress ; — as if in retrospect of his own existence, and the haggard 
battle it too had been. 

He was now about sixty-three ; his work all done, but his heart 
as if broken. A certain Miss Bowles, given to scribbling, with 
its affectations, its sentimentalities, and perhaps twenty years 
younger than he, had (as I afterwards understood) heroically volun- 
teered to marry him, " for the purpose of consoling," etc., etc. ; to 
which he heroically had assented ; and was now on the road towards 
Bristol, or the western region where Miss Bowles lived, for com- 
pleting that poor hope of his and hers. A second wedlock ; in what 
contrast almost dismal, almost horrible, with a former there had 



526 APPENDIX. 

been ! Far away that former one ; but it had been illuminated by 
the hopes and radiances of very heaven ; this second one was to be 
celebrated under sepulchral lamps, and as if in the forecoast of 
the charnel-house ! Southey's deep misery of aspect I should have 
better understood had this been known to me ; but it was known 
to Taylor alone, who kept it locked from everybody. 

The last time I saw Southey was on an evening at Taylor's, no- 
body there but myself; I think he meant to leave town next morn- 
ing, and had wished to say farewell to me first. We sat on the sofa 
together ; our talk was long and earnest ; topic ultimately the 
usual one, steady approach of democracy, with revolution (prob- 
ably explosive) and a finis incomputable to man ; steady decay 
of all morality, political, social, individual ; this once noble Eng- 
land getting more and more ignoble and untrue in every fibre of it, 
till the gold (Goethe's composite king) would all be eaten out, and 
noble England would have to collapse in shapeless ruin, whether for 
ever or not none of us could know. Our perfect consent on these 
matters gave an animation to the dialogue, which I remember as 
copious and pleasant. Southey's last word was in answer to some 
tirade of mine against universal mammon-worship, gradual acceler- 
ating decay of mutual humanity, of piety and fidelity to God or 
man, in all our relations and performances, the whole illustrated by 
examples, I suppose ; to which he answered, not with levity, yet 
with a cheerful tone in his seriousness, '' It will not, and it cannot 
come to good ! " This he spoke standing ; I had risen, checking my 
tirade, intimating that, alas, I must go. He invited me to Cumber- 
land, to '' see the lakes again," and added, '^ Let us know before- 
hand, that the rites of hospitality — " I had already shaken hands, 
and now answered from beyond the door of the apartment, ''Ah, 
yes ; thanks, thanks ! " little thinking that it was my last farewell 
of Southey. 

He went to the Western country ; got wedded, went back to 
Keswick ; and I heard once or so some shallow jest about his prompt- 
itude in wedding : but before long, the news came, first in whispers, 



APPENDIX. 527 

then public and undeniable, that his mind was going and gone, 
memory quite, and the rest hopelessly following it. The new Mrs. 
Southey had not succeeded in " consoling and comforting " him ; but 
far the reverse. We understood afterward that the grown-up daugh- 
ters and their stepmother had agreed ill ; that perhaps neither they 
nor she were very wise, nor the arrangement itself very wise or well- 
contrived. Better perhaps that poor Southey was evicted from it ; 
shrouded away in curtains of his own, and deaf to all discords hence- 
forth ! We heard of him from Miss Fenwick now and then (I think 
for a year or two more) till the end came. He was usually altogether 
placid and quiet, without memory, more and more without thought. 
One day they had tried him with some fine bit of his own poetry ; he 
woke into beautiful consciousness, eyes and features shining with 
their old brightness (and perhaps a few words of rational speech 
coming); but it lasted only some minutes, till all lapsed into the old 
blank again. By degrees all intellect had melted away from him, 
and quietly, unconsciously, he died. There was little noise in the 
public on this occurrence, nor could his private friends do other than, 
in silence, mournfully yet almost gratefully acquiesce. There came 
out by and by two lives of him ; one by his widow, one by his son 
(such the family discrepancies, happily inaudible where they would 
have cut sharpest) ; neither of these books did I look into. 

Southey I used to construe to myself as a man of slight build, but 
of sound and elegant ; with considerable genius in him, considerable 
faculty of speech and rhythmic insight, and with a morality that 
shone distinguished among his contemporaries. I reckoned him 
(with those blue blushes and those red) to be the perhaps excitablcst 
of all men ; and that a deep mute monition of conscience had spoken 
to him, " You are capable of running mad, if you don't take care. 
Acquire habitudes ; stick firm as adamant to them at all times, and 
work, continually work ! " 

This, for thirty or forty years, he had punctually and impetu- 
ously done ; no man so habitual, we were told ; gave up his poetry, 
at a given hour, on stroke of the clock, and took to prose, etc. etc. ; 



528 APPENDIX. 

and, as to diligence and velocity, employed his very walking hours, 
walked with a book in his hand ; and by these methods of his, had 
got through perhaps a greater amount of work, counting quantity 
and quality, than any other man whatever in those years of his ; till 
all suddenly ended. I likened him to one of those huge sandstone 
grinding cylinders which I had seen at Manchester, turning with in- 
conceivable velocity (in the condemned room of the iron factory, 
where " the men die of lung disease at forty," but are permitted to 
smoke in their damp cellar, and think that a rich recompense !) — 
screaming harshly, and shooting out each of them its sheet of fire 
(yellow, starlight, etc. according as it is brass or other kind of metal 
that you grind and polish there) — beautiful sheets of fire, pouring 
out each as if from the paper cap of its low-stooping-backed grinder, 
when you look from rearward. For many years these stones grind 
so, at such a rate ; till at last (in som^e cases) comes a moment when 
the stone's cohesion is quite worn out, overcome by the stupendous 
velocity long continued ; and while grinding its fastest, it flies off 
altogether, and settles some yards from you, a grinding-stone no 
longer, but a cartload of quiet sand. 

Of Wordsworth I have little to write that could ever be of use to 
myself or others. I did not see him much, or till latish in my course 
see him at all ; nor did we deeply admire one another at any time 1 
Of me in my first times he had little knowledge ; and any feeling he 
had towards me, I suspect, was largely blended with abhorrence and 
perhaps a kind of fear. His works I knew, but never considerably 
reverenced ; could not, on attempting it. A man recognisably of 
strong intellectual powers, strong character; given to meditation, 
and much contemptuous of the unmeditatiye world and its noisy 
nothingnesses ; had a fine hmpid style of writing and delineating, in 
his small way ; a fine limpid vein of melody too in him (as of an 
honest rustic fiddle, good, and well handled, but wanting two or 
more of the strings, and not capable of much !) In fact a rather 
dufi, hard-tempered, unproductive and almost wearisome kind of 
man ; not adorable, by any means, as a great poetic genius, much 



APPENDIX. 529 

less as the Trismegistus of such ; whom only a select few could ever 
read, instead of mis-reading, which was the opinion his worshippers 
confidently entertained of him ! Privately I had a real respect for 
him withal, founded on his early biography (which Wilson of Edin- 
burgh had painted to me as of antique greatness). '* Poverty and 
Peasanthood ! Be it so ! but we consecrate ourselves to the muses, 
all the same, and will proceed on those terms, heaven aiding!" 
This, and what of faculty I did recognise in the man, gave me a 
clear esteem of him, as of one remarkable and fairly beyond com- 
mon ; — not to disturb which, I avoided speaking of him to his wor- 
shippers ; or, if the topic turned up, would listen with an acquiescing 
air. But to my private self his divine reflections and unfathomabili- 
ties seemed stinted, scanty, palish and uncertain ; perhaps in part 
a feeble reflex (derived at second hand through Coleridge) of the 
immense German fund of such: — and I reckoned his poetic store- 
house to be far from an opulent or well furnished apartment ! It 
was perhaps about 1840 that I first had any decisive meeting with 
Wordsworth, or made any really personal acquaintance with him. 
In parties at Taylor's I may have seen him before ; but we had no 
speech together, nor did we specially notice one another. One such 
time I do remember (probably before „as it was in my earlier days 
of Sterling acquaintanceship, when Sterling used to argue much 
with me) ; Wordsworth sat silent, almost next to me, while Sterling 
took to asserting the claims of Kotzcbue as a dramatist ("recom- 
mended even by Goethe," as he likewise urged) ; whom I with 
pleasure did my endeavour to explode from that mad notion, and 
thought (as I still recollect), " This will perhaps please Wordsworth 
too ; " who, however, gave not the least sign of that or any other 
feeling. I had various dialogues with him in that same room ; but 
those, I judge, were all or mostly of after date. 

On a summer morning (let us call it 1840 then) I was apprised 
by Taylor that Wordsworth had come to town, and would meet a 
small party of us at a certain tavern in St. James's Street, at break- 
fast, to which I was invited for the given day and hour. We had a 
34 



530 APPENDIX. 

pretty little room, quiet though looking streetward (tavern's name is 
quite lost to me) ; the morning sun was pleasantly tinting the oppo- 
site houses, a balmy, calm, and sunlight morning. Wordsworth, 
I think, arrived just along with me ; we had still five minutes of 
sauntering and miscellaneous talking before the whole were assem- 
bled. I do not positively remember any of them, except that James 
Spedding was there, and that the others, not above five or six in 
whole, were polite intelligent quiet persons, and, except Taylor and 
Wordsworth, not of any special distinction in the world. Breakfast 
was pleasant, fairly beyond the common of such things. Words- 
worth seemed in good tone, and, much to Taylor's satisfaction, 
talked a great deal ; about " poetic " correspondents of his own (i.e. 
correspondents for the sake of his poetry ; especially one such who 
had sent him, from Canton, an excellent chest of tea ; correspon- 
dent grinningly applauded by us all) ; then about ruralities and mis- 
cellanies ; ''Countess of Pembroke" antique she-Clifford, glory of 
those northern parts, who was not new to any of us, but was set 
forth by Wordsworth with gusto and brief emphasis ; " you lily- 
livered," etc. ; and now the only memorable item under that head. 
These were the first topics. Then finally about literature, literary 
laws, practices, observance^, at considerable length, and turning 
wholly on the mechanical part, including even a good deal of shal- 
low enough etymology, from me and others, which was well re- 
ceived. On all this Wordsworth enlarged with evident satisfaction, 
and was joyfully reverent of the "wells of English undefiled;" 
though stone dumb as to the deeper rules and wells of Eternal Truth 
and Harmony, which you were to try and set forth by said undefiled 
wells of English or what other speech you had ! To me a little dis- 
appointing, but not much ; though it would have given me pleasure 
had the robust veteran man emerged a little out of vocables into 
things, now and then, as he never once chanced to do. For the 
rest, he talked well in his way ; with veracity, easy brevity and force, 
as a wise tradesman would of his tools and workshop, — and as no 
unwise one could. His voice was good, frank and sonorous, though 
practically clear distinct and forcible rather than melodious ; the 



APPENDIX. 531 

tone cf him businesslike, sedately confident ; no discourtesy, yet no 
anxiety about being courteous. A fine wholesome rusticity, fresh 
as his mountain breezes, sat well on the stalwart veteran, and on all 
he said and did. You would have said he was a usually taciturn 
man ; glad to unlock himself to audience sympathetic and intelligent, 
when such offered itself. His face bore marks of much, not always 
peaceful, meditation ; the look of it not bland or benevolent so much 
as close impregnable and hard: a man multa taccre loqiiivc parahiSy 
in a world where he had experienced no lack of contradictions as he 
strode along ! The eyes were not very brilliant, but they had a 
quiet clearness ; there was enough of brow and well shaped ; rather 
too much of cheek (" horse face" I have heard satirists say) ; face 
of squarish shape and decidedly longish, as I think the head itself 
was (its ''length*' going horizontal) ; he was large-boned, lean^ but 
still firm-knit tall and strong-looking when he stood, a right good 
old steel-grey figure, with rustic simplicity and dignity about him, 
and a vivacious strength looking through him which might have 
suited one of those old steel-grey markgrafs whom Henry the Fowler 
set up to ward the ''marches" and do battle with the intrusive 
heathen in a stalwart and judicious manner. 

On this and other occasional visits of his, I saw Wordsworth a 
number of times, at dinner, in evening parties ; and we grew a little 
more familiar, but without much increase of real intimacy or affec- 
tion springing up between us. He was willing to talk with me in a 
corner, in noisy extensive circles, having weak eyes, and little loving 
the general babble current in such places. One evening, probably 
about this time, I got him upon the subject of great poets, who I 
thought might be admirable equally to us both ; but was rather mis- 
taken, as I gradually found. Pope's partial failure I was prepared 
for ; less for the narrowish limits visible in Milton and others. I 
tried him with Burns, of whom he had sung tender recognition ; but 
Burns also turned out to be a limited inferior creature, any genius 
he had a theme for one's pathos rather ; even Shakspeare himself 
had his blind sides, his limitations ; gradually it became apparent 
to me that of transcendent unlimited there was, to this critic, prob- 



532 APPENDIX. 

ably but one specimen known, Wordsworth himself! He by no 
means said so, or hinted so, in words ; but on the whole it was all I 
gathered from him in this considerable tete-a-tete of ours ; and it 
was not an agreeable conquest. New notion as to poetry or poet I 
had not in the smallest degree got ; but my insight into the depths 
of Wordsworth's pride in himself had considerably augmented ; and 
it did not increase my love of him ; though I did not in the least 
hate it either, so quiet was it, so fixed, unappealing, like a dim old 
lichened crag on the wayside, the private meaning of which, in con- 
trast with any public meaning it had, you recognised with a kind of 
not wholly melancholy grin. 

Another and better corner dialogue I afterwards had with him, 
possibly also about this time ; which raised him intellectually some 
real degrees higher in my estimation than any of his deliverances, 
written or oral, had ever done ; and which I may reckon as the best 
of all his discoursings or dialogues with me. He had withdrawn to a 
corner, out of the light and of the general babble, as usual with him. 
I joined him there, and knowing how little fruitful was the literary 
topic between us, set him on giving me an account of the notable 
practicalities he had seen in life, especially of the notable men. He 
went into all this with a certain alacrity, and was willing to speak 
whenever able on the terms. He had been in France in the earlier 
or secondary stage of the Revolution ; had witnessed the struggle of 
Girondins and Mountain, in particular the execution of Gorsas, ''the 
first deputy sent to the scaffold ;" and testified strongly to the omi- 
nous feeling which that event produced in everybody, and of which 
he himself still seemed to retain something : '' Where will it end, 
when you have set an example in this kind ? " I knew well about Gor- 
sas, but had found in my readings no trace of the public emotion his 
death excited ; andperceived now that Wordsworth might be taken as 
a true supplement to my book, on this small point. He did not other- 
wise add to or alter my ideas on the Revolution, nor did we dwell long 
there ; but hastened over to England and to the noteworthy, or at 
■least noted men of that and the subsequent time. "Noted "and 
named, I ought perhaps to say, rather than "noteworthy;" for in 



APPENDIX. 533 

general I forget what men they were ; and now remember only the 
excellent sagacity, distinctness and credibility of Wordsworth's little 
biographic portraitures of them. Never, or never but once, had I 
seen a stronger intellect, a more luminous and veracious power of 
insight, directed upon such a survey of fellow men and their contem- 
porary journey through the world. A great deal of Wordsworth lay 
in the mode and tone of drawing, but you perceived it to be faith- 
ful, accurate, and altogether life-like, though Wordsworthian. One 
of the best remembered sketches (almost the only one now remem- 
bered at all) was that of Wilberforce, the famous Nigger-philan- 
thropist, drawing-room Christian, and busy man and politician. In 
all which capacities Wordsworth's esteem of him seemed to be pri- 
vately as small as my own private one, and was amusing to gather. 
No hard word of him did he speak or hint ; told in brief firm business 
terms, how he was born at or near the place called Wilberforce in 
Yorkshire (" force " signifying torrent or angry brook as in Cumber- 
land?) ; where, probably, his forefathers may have been possessors, 
though he was poorish ; how he did this and that of insignificant fto 
Wordsworth insignificant) nature; ''and then," ended Wordsworth, 
*' he took into the oil trade" (I suppose the Hull whaling); which lively 
phrase, and the incomparable historical tone it was given in — " the 
oil trade " — as a thing perfectly natural and proper for such a man, is 
almost the only point in the delineation which is now vividly present to 
me. I remember only the rustic picture, sketched as with a burnt stick 
on the board of a pair of bellows, seemed to me completely good ; 
and that the general effect was, one saw the great Wilberforce and 
his existence visible in all their main lineaments, but only as through 
the reversed telescope, and reduced to the size of a mouse and its 
nest, or little more ! This was, in most or in all cases, the result 
brought out ; oneself and telescope of natural (or perhaps preter- 
natural) size ; but the object, so great to vulgar eyes, reduced amaz- 
ingly, with all its lineaments recognizable. I found a very superior 
talent in these W^ordsworth delineations. They might have re- 
minded me, though I know not whether they did at the time, of a 
larger series like them, which I had from my father during two wet 



534 APPENDIX. 

days which confined us to the house, the last time we met at Scots- 
brig ! These were of select Annandale figures whom I had seen in 
my boyhood ; and of whom, now that they were all vanished, I was 
glad to have, for the first time, some real knowledge as facts ; the 
outer siinulacra, in all their equipments, being still so pathetically 
vivid to me. My father's, in rugged simple force, picturesque 
ingenuity, veracity and brevity, were, I do judge, superior to even 
Wordsvwrth's, as bits of human portraiture ; without flavor of con- 
tempt, too, but given out with judicial indifference ; and intermixed 
here and there with flashes of the poetical and soberly pathetic 
(e.g. the death of Ball of Dunnaby, and why the two joiners were 
seen sawing wood in a pour of rain), which the Wordsworth sketches, 
mainly of distant and indifferent persons, altogether wanted. Oh 
my brave, dear, and ever-honoured peasant father, where among 
the grandees, sages, and recognized poets of the world, did I listen 
to such sterling speech as yours, golden product of a heart and brain 
all sterling and royal ! That is a literal fact ; and it has often filled 
me with strange reflections, in the whirlpools of this mad world ! 

During the last seven or ten years of his life, Wordsworth felt 
himself to be a recognised lion, in certain considerable London cir- 
cles, and was in the habit of coming up to town with his wife for a 
month or two every season, to enjoy his quiet triumph and collect 
his bits of tribute tales quales. The places where I met him oftenest, 
were Marshall's (the great Leeds linen manufacturer, an excellent 
and very opulent man), Spring-Rice's (i.e. Lord Monteagle's, who 
and whose house was strangely intermarried with this Marshall's), 
and the first Lord Stanley's of Alderly (who then, perhaps, was still 
Sir Thomas Stanley). Wordsworth took his bit of lionism very quietly, 
with a smile sardonic rather than triumphant, and certainly got no 
harm by it, if he got or expected little good. His wife, a small, with- 
ered, puckered, winking lady, who never spoke, seemed to be more, in 
earnest about the affair, and -.vas visibly and som.etimes ridiculously 
assiduous to secure her proper place of precedence at table. One 
evening at Lord Monteagle's — Ah, who was it that then made me laugh 
as we went home together: Ah me! Wordsworth generally spoke a 



APPENDIX. 535 

little with me on those occasions ; sometimes, perhaps, we sat by 
one another ; but there came from him nothing considerable, and 
happily at least nothing with an effort. *' If you think mc dull, be it 
just so ! " — this seemed to a most respectable extent to be his 
inspiring humour. Hardly above once (perhaps at the Stanleys') 
do I faintly recollect something of the contrary on his part for a 
little while, which was not pleasant or successful while it lasted. 
The light was always afflict \e to his eyes ; he carried in his pocket 
something like a skeleton brass candlestick, in which, setting it on 
the dinner- table, between him and the most afflictive or nearest of 
the chief lights, he touched a little spring, and there flirted out, at 
the top of his brass implement, a small vertical green circle which 
prettily enough threw his eyes into shade, and screened him from 
that sorrow. In proof of his equanimity as lion I remember, in 
connection with this green shade, one little glimpse which shall be 
given presently as finis. But first let me say that all these Words- 
worth phenomena appear to have been indifferent to me, and have 
melted to steamy oblivion in a singular degree. Of his talk to others 
in my hearing I remember simply nothing, not even a word or ges- 
ture. To myself it seemed once or twice as if he bore suspicions, 
thinking I was not a real worshipper, which threw him into some- 
thing of embarrassment, till I hastened to get them laid, by frank 
discourse on some suitable thing ; nor, when we did talk, was there 
on his side or on mine the least utterance worth noting. The tone 
of his voice when I got him afloat on some Cumberland or other 
matter germane to him, had a braced rustic vivacity, willingness, 
and solid precision, which alone rings in my ear when all else is 
gone. Of some Druid-circle, for example, he prolonged his response 
to me with the addition, " And there is another some miles off, 
which the country people call Long Meg and her Daughters " ; as 
to the now ownership of which " It " etc. ; " and then it came into 
the hands of a Mr. Crackenthorpe ; " the sound of those two phrases 
is still lively and present with me ; meaning or sound of absolutely 
nothing more. Still more memorable is an ocular glimpse I had in 
one of these Wordsworthian lion-dinners, very symbolic to me of his 



536 APPENDIX. 

general deportment there, and far clearer than the little feature of 
opposite sort, ambiguously given above (recollection of that viz. of 
unsuccessful exertion at a Stanley dinner being dubious and all but 
extinct, while this is still vivid .to me as of yesternight). Dinner 
was large, luminous, sumptuous ; I sat a long way from Words- 
worth ; dessert I think had come in, and certainly there reigned in 
all quarters a cackle as of Babel (only politer perhaps), w^hich far up 
in Wordsworth's quarter (who was leftward on my side of the table) 
seemed to have taken a sententious, rather louder, logical and quasi- 
scientific turn, heartily unimportant to gods and men, so far as I 
could judge of it and of the other babble reigning. I look upwards, 
leftwards, the coast being luckily for a moment clear ; then, far off, 
beautifully screened in the shadow of his vertical green circle, which 
was on the farther side of him, sate Wordsworth, silent, slowly but 
steadily gnawing some portion of what I judged to be raisins, with 
his eye and attention placidly fixed on these and these alone. The 
sight of whom, and of his rock-like indifference to the babble, quasi- 
scientific and other, with attention turned on the small practical 
alone, was comfortable and amusing to me, wdio felt like him but 
could not eat raisins. This little glimpse I could still paint, so clear 
and bright is it, and this shall be symbolical of all. 

In a few years, I forget in how many and when, these Words- 
worth appearances in London ceased ; we heard, not of ill-health 
perhaps, but of increasing love of rest ; at length of the long 
sleep's coming ; and never saw Wordsworth more. One felt his 
death as the extinction of a public light, but not otherwise. The 
public itself found not much to say of him, and staggered on to 
meaner but more pressing objects. Why should I continue these 
melancholy jottings in which I have no interest ; in which the one 
figure that could interest me is almost wanting ! I will cease. 
[Finished, after many miserable interruptions, catarrhal and other, 
at Mentone, March 8, 1867.J 



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The best Biography of the Greatest of the Romans. 



CiESAR: A Sketch. 

. BY 

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. 



One vol., 8vo, cloth, -with a Steel Portrait and a Map. 
Price, $2.50. 



There is no historical writer of our time who can rival Mr. Froude in vivid 
delineation of character, grace and clearness of style and elegant and solid 
scholarship. In his Life of Ccesar, all these qualities appear in their fullest 
perfection, resulting in a fascinating narrative which will be read with keen 
delight by a multitude of readers, and will enhance, if possible, Mr. Froude's 
brilliant reputation. 



CRITICAL NOTICES. 

"The book is charmingly written, and, on the whole, wisely written. There are many 
admirable, really noble, passages ; there are hundreds of pages which few living men 
could match. * * * The political life of Caesar is explained with singular lucidity, 
and with what seems to us remarkable fairness. The horrible condition of Roman 
society under the rule of the magnates is painted with startling power and brilliance of 
coloring. — Atlantic Monthly. 

" Mr. Froude's latest work, " Caesar," is affluent of his most distinctive traits. 
Nothing that he has written is more brilliant, more incisive, more interesting. * * * 
He combines into a compact and nervous narrative all that is known of the personal, 
social, political, and military life of Caesar ; and with his sketch of Caesar, includes other 
brilliant sketches of the great men, his friends or rivals, who contemporaneously with 
him formed the principal figures in the Roman world." — Harper's Monthly. 

"This book is a most fascinating biography, and is by far the best account of Julius 
Caesar to be found in the English language." — London Standard. 

" It is the best biography of the greatest of the Romans we have, and it is in some 
respects Mr. Froude's best piece of historical writing." — Hartford Courant. 

Mr. Froude has given the public the best of all recent books on the life, charactes 
and career of Julius Caesar." — Phila. Eve. Bulletin. 



*^* For sale by all booksellers.^ or will be sent, prepaid, upon 
receipt of price ^ by 

CHARLES SCRTBNER'S SONS, 

743 AND 745 Broadway, New York, 



The Standard Edition of Gladstone's Essays. 



(llFflnings of JPast gpflrs. 



The Ri^ht Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE, 



Seven Volutme^, ISmo. Cloth, per Toluute, 91.00. 



rbe e xtrao rdinary scope of Mr. C^adstone's learning — the wonder <^ 
kis friends and enemies alike — and lus firm gra^ of every subject he 
^■Qrw<8Qp<s, make his esays much more than transient literature. Thar 
collection and publication in pennanent shape were of course certain to 
be ondertaken sooner or later; and now that they are so published with 
the benefit of his own revision, they wiU need little hoalding in England 
or America. 

What Mr. Gladstraie has written in the last thirty-six years — the period 
coTered by this coOecticHi — has profaal^y had the attention of as large an 
English-speaking public as any writer on political and social topics crcr 
readied in his own life-time. The papers which he has chosen as of 
lasting value, and included here under the title of Gleanings of Past 
Years, will form the standard edition of his miscellanies, both for his 
It maltitnde of readers, ard for tbcse -h? --HI study his writings 



Vol- I. The Throne, and the Prince Consort; 

The Cabinet, and Constitution. 

Vol- II.— Personal and Literary. 

Vol. III.— Historical and Speculative. 

Vol. IV.-Foreign. 

Vol. V. / - , . ^. , 
„ , ,,, - Ecclesiastical. 
Vol. VI. * 

Vol. VII.— Miscellaneous. 

%*7l^ fl3— ^ f>.v«j f.-r saLi rr <iJ.' hz'.-ksfllerx, or wxZ7 he sent, frr^idf m^ot 

CHARLES SCRIBXER'S SON'S. Publishers, 

743 AXD 745 Broadway, New Yobk. 



"The world has waited for this publication, and now that it has appeared, it 
will be diligently read by all men." 



THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

OF 

PRINCE METTERNICH. 

Edited by his Son, Prince Metternich. Translated by Robina Napier. 
With a minute index prepared especially for this edition. 

2 vols., 8vo. With Portrait and Fac-similes - - $5.00. 



For twenty years— since it became known at his death that the great diplomatist 
of the Napoleonic period had left his memoirs — the publication of this book has been 
looked for with such interest as perhaps no other personal revelations could have 
aroused. Prince Metternich's own directions kept it back during this time; and this 
fact, with the complete secresy preserved as to the contents of the manuscript, rightly 
led to the belief that he had treated the events and persons of his day with an un- 
sparing candor. 

The simultaneous publication of the memoirs in Germany, France, England and 
America is therefore somethin-g more than a literary event. Metternich alone held the 
keys of the most secret history of the most important epoch in modern times, and in 
this book he gives them up — animpossibility during his life. Even to especial students, 
who know what problems these disclosures have been expected to solve, the value of 
what they open will be as surprising as the extraordinary care with which they have 
been guarded. 

The announcement alone is of sufficient interest, that we are at last in possession 
of the autobiography otthe statesman who from the French Revolution to Waterloo, 
took part in the making of nearly every great treaty, and was himself the negotiator 
of the greatest ; and who from 1806 to 1815, was the guiding mind of the vast combin- 
ations which defeated Napoleon and decided the form of modern Europe. 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS OF THE METTERNICH 
MEMOIRS. 

" The great chancellor writes with an exceedingly easy pen. It is indeed inter- 
esting to follow his narration, so clear that one never loses the thread of his story, and 
so graphic that we get a glimpse of the scenes as with our own eyes. The work is 
intensely interesting to read, and of the greatest value to the historical student."— 
N. Y. Independent. 

"Of the great value of the work we have already spoken. It not only enables 
the world for the first time to understand clearly the objects for which Prince Metter- 
nich contended throughout his long public life, but casts fresh light on some of the 
most obscure historical incidents of his day." — The Athenceuin. 

"The Memoirs of Metternich are to be heartily welcomed oy all who are inter- 
ested either in the serious facts or the lighter gossip of history. There is no period, 
indeed, in recent history, more important or attractive than that covered by the first 
volume of these memoirs." — Boston Literary World. 



*^* For sale by all booksellers^ or will be sent, prepaid, upon 
teceipt of price, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 



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